U.S. investors lack confidence in their traditional sources of information about publicly traded companies, according to a survey conducted by Rating Research LLC.

Only 13% of U.S. investors say they are “very confident” in investment advisors as a source of information. The numbers trail off for government (10%), the media (7%), large brokerage firms (6%), and investor relations departments (6%).

At the end of June, more than half (51%) of investors surveyed said they were “not very” or “not at all” confident in corporate financial information. One month earlier, less than one-fourth (24%) of investors expressed the same feeling. Almost six in 10investors say they are “less confident” in financial information than they were one year earlier.

Equally as jarring is the lack of confidence analysts have in the information they receive from their sources. Although 92% of analysts say that direct contact with a company and its financial reports or SEC filings is their primary source, only 23% feel “very confident” in the quality of information from corporations.

Investors and analysts increasingly put a premium on information about companies’ reputations, but are dissatisfied with what is available to them. More than two-thirds (68%) of investors and virtually all analysts (84%) say access to information on the reputation and business practices of publicly traded companies is very important. However, only 14% of investors are “very confident” in the quality of information they have access to while only 7% of analysts are “very confident” in the information they have on the companies they follow.

When asked why they are unhappy with the quality of the information they get, analysts offer several reasons. Forty-three per cent mention that the “quality of the information is poor” or “there is not enough information” while 24% feel that companies need to be “more forthright”.

The RRC survey included two waves of interviews with 1,000 U.S. investors at the end of May and again in late June. One hundred analysts who follow the Retail, Pharmaceutical and Electric Power industries were interviewed in late June and early July. Additionally, RRC conducted a series of six focus groups among analysts in the same industries to provide further depth to the information collected in the survey.