Measure 5.1.1: Court Employees’ Perceptions of Court Performance

This measure asks court employees about their views of the court’s performance in the other four standard areas. Data are collected by means of a mailed questionnaire to court employees.¹ The measure should be conducted by an individual experienced in survey research who is perceived as independent of the court.

• Contact someone external to the court to conduct the measure. Some courts in the demonstration project requested that staff from their State’s administrative office of the courts conduct the measure. Private consultants and university faculty also could be approached.

• Emphasize the confidentiality of survey responses in a cover letter accompanying the questionnaire. The following language was included in one court’s cover letter: "Please understand that your answers will be completely confidential and no individual responses will be identified. No one in the court will see the completed questionnaires. Rather, the court will receive aggregate results once all responses have been tabulated."

• Do not place any type of code on the questionnaires for tracking who has not yet completed one. Instead, send a followup letter to all respondents thanking those who have completed the questionnaire and asking the others to complete and mail the questionnaire.

• Include with the questionnaire a stamped return envelope with the address of the external individual administering the questionnaire.

• Do not include any demographics on the questionnaire. This is especially critical for small courts in which there are only a few employees who fall into various demographic categories.

After considering the issue of confidentiality, the next step is to review Form 5.1.1, Court Employees’ Perceptions of Court Performance. The questionnaire items address standards for access to justice; expedition and timeliness; equality, fairness, and integrity; and independence and accountability. Some of its content was drawn from other surveys of the public’s perceptions of the justice system.² The questionnaire can be used as is or modified to include questions on the most salient issues facing each community.³

Data Collection. A questionnaire should be sent to each full-time employee listed in the court’s personnel files.⁴ As noted above, a return envelope with the survey administrator’s name on it should be included with each questionnaire. Two weeks after the questionnaire is sent, a reminder letter should be sent to all employees asking them to complete the questionnaire if they have not done so already.

Data Analysis and Report Preparation. The number code corresponding to each question’s response is entered into a computer file. Using a computer software statistical package, the percentage of each response for each question is calculated.

Evaluations of the court are coded differently across items. Agreement with one question may indicate a positive appraisal whereas agreement with another question may indicate a negative appraisal. As a result, if the response of strongly agree is always scored as "1," a score of "1" or "2" may indicate good performance on some questions and poor performance on other questions.

For Section II of the questionnaire, items 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 20 are negative items. In general, the more items on which a court is well perceived (a higher percentage of "3" and "4" on positive items and "1" and "2" on negative items), the closer the court comes to meeting the standards for public trust and confidence.

The items on the questionnaire also can be analyzed by performance areas. Items 2, 6, 10, 14, and 17 refer to the standards in Performance Area 1, Access To Justice; items 3, 7, and 11 refer to the standards in Performance Area 2, Expedition and Timeliness; items 4, 8, 12, 15, 18, and 20 refer to the standards in Performance Area 3, Equality, Fairness, and Integrity; and items 5, 9, 13, 16, and 19 refer to the standards in Performance Area 4, Independence and Accountability.

The percentage of positive responses on the items in each of these areas can be reviewed to determine the areas in which court employees approve of the court’s performance and the areas in which court employees consider the court’s performance lacking.

__________________________________
¹ Although the survey addresses the perceptions of court employees, the instrument can be modified easily to address the perceptions of other publics such as attorneys, jurors, and litigants. Depending on the size of the population under study, the court may want to include some demographic questions on the modified instrument.
² See, for example, Citizens' Commission to Improve Michigan Courts, Final Report and Recommendations to Improve the Efficiency and Responsiveness of Michigan Courts (Lansing, MI: Michigan Supreme Court, 1986); GMA Research Corporation, Washington State Judicial Survey (Olympia, WA: Office of the Administrator for the Courts, State of Washington, 1988); and Yankelovich, Skelly, and White, Inc., The Public Image of Courts: Highlights of a National Survey of the General Public, Judges, Lawyers and Community Leaders (Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts, 1978).
³ If a court is interested in its performance in only one or two standard areas, the questionnaire can be modified by adding several questions in the areas of interest and eliminating questions from the other areas. The results of this survey will be more reliable with regard to public perception of court performance in the specific areas, but they will be less reliable with regard to public perception of the court's overall performance. As drafted, the instrument includes one question for each of the 19 standards in the first four performance areas.
⁴ Although a sample of employees could be drawn, there is value in soliciting everyone's opinions unless cost is a major consideration. In a few very large courts, the number of employees may exceed 1,000. For these courts, a systematic sample of employees should be selected.

Go to Form 5.1.1

Go to Standard 5.1

Go to Table of Contents