Confidence of Mexican Americans in Major Institutions in the United States

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Abstract
Part of the image of Mexican Americans is that they lack trust in institutions. The truth of this image was investigated by comparing responses of 324 female and 286 male Mexican Americans and 9,216 female and 7,782 male non-Hispanic Whites to items about confidence in 13 major institutions in the United States (education, organized religion, major companies, organized labor, banks and financial institutions, the press, television, the executive branch of the federal government, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the military, medicine, and the scientific community) asked on 22 surveys conducted from 1973 through 2000, each of which was representative of the U.S. population. Comparisons provided strong evidence that the image had almost no basis in fact and that Mexican Americans were, in many cases, more confident in institutions in the United States than non-Hispanic Whites.