NCSC: Research: Trial Court Performance Standards

Trial Court Perforrmance Standards & Measurement System

Measure 4.4.2: Assessment of the Court’s Media Policies and Practices

This measure surveys representatives of the media and court personnel to obtain information about court practices when responding to media inquiries. Designed to elicit open-ended responses, the survey is conducted in an interview format, by telephone, or in person. Relatively small numbers of interviews are required: a maximum of 20 in the largest courts and 6 to 10 in medium-sized courts (5 to 10 judges).

Planning/Preparation. Court administrators identify representatives of the media and court personnel for a survey about court practices. Representatives of the media who interact with the court regularly and court employees who routinely field or respond to media inquiries are identified. Court employees are briefed by the court manager about the process so that they will cooperate with the interviewer. If possible, two to three times as many court employees should be identified and briefed than will be interviewed so that any employee concerns about protecting anonymity can be satisfied. When this is not possible, survey questions may need to be omitted or may not be candidly answered (e.g., a question asking the employee to evaluate the appropriateness of court policy).

In all cases, the suggested survey forms (Forms 4.4.2a and 4.4.2b) should be reviewed and modified to fit specific local circumstances while preserving the survey’s basic content requirements.

After reviewing and revising the survey as necessary, the court should select an interviewer who is not a court employee (see discussion of data collection below).

Data Collection. This step should be completed by a designated research professional. However, it is best to avoid the use of court personnel to conduct the interviews. The interview is not especially complex or demanding and arrangements for securing an interviewer might be made with professors or graduate students at a local college. In smaller communities it may be possible to find an appropriately qualified person who teaches journalism or political science at a local high school. What is crucial is that the person be skilled at placing people at ease, understand the importance of sticking closely with the interview structure, and refrain from "leading" the interviewee while eliciting responses. The person also must understand the anonymity requirements and be able to judge how best to preserve them in summarizing the results of the surveys.

The surveys address the level of satisfaction with the court’s policy, the faithfulness with which court policy is carried out, and satisfaction with actual procedure or experience. Among the topics examined are:

Whether media representatives and court employees know the court’s policy.
Whether media representatives and court employees consider the policy to be reasonable and workable.
Whether court responses are timely.

Whether court responses are of high quality.
Open-ended observations and comments about court and media interactions that are not covered in the survey questions.

Data Analysis and Report Preparation. After the survey has been completed, a summary of responses should be prepared using simple frequencies (percentages are not appropriate with very small numbers of cases). Because the numbers are small, no special analysis tools are needed—a pencil and paper tabulation should be sufficient. Comments made by interviewees also might be included in the report if they do not compromise anonymity.

An important requirement for report preparation is to present the data in a way that allows a ready comparison of responses of media representatives and court personnel to parallel questions.

These data will provide the court with some insight into two aspects of its performance with respect to media relations:

The court’s success in informing the media and its employees about its policies.
The satisfaction of court and media representatives with the court’s policies.

Go to Form 4.4.2

Go to Standard 4.4

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