Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ) validation in French language: Exploring links to loneliness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The concept of epistemic trust is gaining traction in the mental health field. Epistemic trust is thought to play a foundational role as a resilience factor against the development and maintenance of psychopathology by fostering social learning. The primary aim of this study was to validate the French-language version of the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ). We further sought to replicate previously reported associations with key developmental and psychological factors (childhood trauma, mentalizing and attachment) and test for epistemic trust's potential mediating roles between childhood traumatic experiences and psychopathology, and between loneliness and psychopathology. A total of 302 participants were recruited via the online survey platform Prolific. Confirmatory factor analysis and generalized linear models of mediation were conducted. Our findings suggest that the ETMCQ is a valid instrument to assess epistemic trust in the French language. Satisfactory psychometric properties were found to replicate the original three-factor solution in a Francophone population with a 12-item version of the questionnaire, with criterion-related validity similar to that previously published in validations of the ETMCQ in other languages. We also replicate previous findings reporting differential associations between epistemic stances (trust, mistrust and credulity) and attachment dimensions and styles, while also replicating mediation analyses showing the role of epistemic stances in the relationship between childhood traumatic experiences and psychopathology. Finally, we report preliminary evidence suggesting that epistemic trust mediates the well-described association between loneliness and psychopathology. Future research should investigate the ETMCQ in clinical populations in which psychopathological expressions are severe, enduring and co-occurring, where identifying potential mediators could help target and personalize psychosocial interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".