Standard 5.1: Accessibility

The public perceives the trial court and the justice it delivers as accessible.

Commentary. The five standards grouped in the area of Access to Justice require the removal of barriers that interfere with access to trial court services. Standard 5.1 focuses on the perceptions of different constituencies about court accessibility. A trial court should not only be accessible to those who need its services but also be perceived as accessible by those who may need its services in the future.

• Measure 1.2.3, Perceptions Of Courthouse Security. A questionnaire is mailed to regular users of the court (e.g., court employees, attorneys, probation officers, and jurors) to determine their perceptions of courthouse security.

• Measure 1.2.6, Evaluation of Accessibility and Convenience by Court Users. The ease and convenience of conducting business with the court is measured through a survey of regular court users (i.e., court employees, attorneys, probation officers, and jurors).

• Measure 1.2.7, Evaluation Of Accessibility And Convenience By Observers. Volunteer observers (members of the general public collecting data for the court) are given a survey questionnaire on the ease of conducting business with the court at the end of their first observation day in the courthouse.

• Measure 1.4.1, Court Users’ Assessment of Court Personnel’s Courtesy and Responsiveness. The courtesy and responsiveness of court personnel is measured through a survey of regular court users (i.e., court employees, attorneys, probation officers, and jurors).

• Measure 1.4.2, Observers’ Assessment of Court Personnel’s Courtesy and Responsiveness. Volunteer observers are given a questionnaire regarding their treatment by court personnel.

As noted, these measures collect data from several of the court’s publics: court employees, attorneys, probation officers, jurors, and members of the general public who are assisting the court with some of the measures.

In addition, this standard includes three measures that gauge the court’s performance with regard to all of the standards for the Public Trust and Confidence performance area. Measure 5.1.1 examines the opinions of court personnel regarding court performance through a mailed survey. On a day-to-day basis, court employees are more familiar with the court and its activities than are any other public. They have an important perspective on how the court is performing in the various standard areas. If they are dissatisfied with the court’s performance, they are not likely to convey a positive image of the court to members of the general public with whom they have contact, thus lessening the court’s ability to instill public trust and confidence.

Measure 5.1.2 uses focus group interviews to obtain the opinions of various members of the justice system regarding the court’s performance. Individuals who routinely interact with the court to perform their jobs (e.g., law enforcement officers, attorneys, individuals from social service agencies) are included. These individuals have the advantage of having firsthand knowledge of many areas of the court’s performance without being actual employees of the court.

Finally, Measure 5.1.3 uses a telephone survey to obtain the general public’s perception of the court’s performance. Members of the general public have little, if any, firsthand knowledge of the court and its activities. Their perceptions are based on what they read, see, and hear.

Go to Performance Area 5

• 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.

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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.

Measure 5.1.2: Justice System Representatives’ Perceptions of Court Performance

• Introduction: The moderator should greet all of the participants, introduce himself or herself, introduce the participants to each other, and briefly describe the objective for the group session. Additionally, the moderator should establish an approximate time duration for the session and should describe the session’s rules (e.g., one person talks at a time, no smoking).

• Warmup: Each participant should be given an opportunity to discuss briefly his or her affiliation with the court process. The moderator should begin the discussion with a broad topic. For example, during the demonstration of this measure, one court conducted a brief brainstorming session to identify users of the courts and their expectations of the court system.

• Main discussion: After allowing some discussion of the warmup questions, the moderator should guide the group into a discussion of the specific topics listed in the moderator guide. To maximize the utility of the focus group session, it is essential that only the moderator guide the discussion. This need to keep the discussion focused is the principal reason for requiring an experienced moderator.

• Wrapup and closing: At the end of the session, the moderator should recap what he or she perceived to be the discussion’s major points or conclusions to ensure the accuracy and importance of those points.

Data Analysis and Report Preparation. Following the three sessions, a short report should be prepared by the moderator that covers the following topics: (1) the reasons the focus groups were conducted and the types of information sought, (2) a description of the groups (e.g., the types of individuals included, the size of the groups), (3) themes that emerged during the discussion, and (4) recommendations and conclusions that were developed during each group and as a result of all three groups.

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⁵ The focus group sessions will not include much of the technical aspects of traditional focus group sessions such as video recording and observation of the group through a one-way mirror. The cost of conducting these sessions will be considerably less than for typical focus group sessions. The primary expense will be for the services of a professional moderator/facilitator.
⁶ The description of this measure relies on the work of D. Morgan, Focus Groups as Qualitative Research (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988). For more information on focus groups, see R.A. Krueger, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1988).
⁷ Group decisionmaking software may provide an alternative to conducting sessions in person. The software provides a forum for discussions while ensuring the anonymity of participants' comments.
⁸ The coordinator for the measure may be included if the individual is seen as neutral (e.g., someone from the AOC or from an outside institution such as a university).

Measure 5.1.3: General Public’s Perceptions of Court Performance

• Complete 1,000 interviews by telephone with county residents who are at least 18 years of age. A draft of the survey is provided in an attachment as a guide to survey length and as a means of determining the amount of phone time needed to complete each survey. The final survey may differ from the attached draft, but not significantly.

• Finalize the survey instrument and pretest it.

• Select the sampling frame to be used and draw an appropriate sample from this list.

• Conduct all telephone surveys from an inhouse facility or through supervised staff at a calling facility that is used regularly by the contractor.

• Encode and clean all data collected via the survey instrument for computer analysis.

• Prepare frequency tabulation by demographic characteristics for all survey items, which should include, at a minimum, number and percentages by response categories.

• Provide all data in (specify software)-readable format on 3.5-inch diskettes.

• Provide all documentation needed to analyze the data.

• Print all survey forms.

• Cover all long-distance charges incurred in conducting the survey.

• Provide a written description of the methodology used, estimates of the sampling error, limitations of the research, and a copy of the final survey instrument used.

Once the contractor has been selected, the coordinator for the measure reviews Form 5.1.3, Public Perceptions of Court Performance, with the contractor to determine what modifications might be necessary to increase its relevance for the court’s jurisdiction. Form 5.1.3 includes questions associated with each of the four standard areas.¹⁰

As part of their review, the coordinator and contractor should consider what the court wants to learn as a result of the survey. Is the court interested in learning the public’s perceptions of specific areas of court performance, regardless of the public’s actual experience with the court? Or does the court want to know the perceptions of more informed members of the public who have had some contact with the court? If the latter is desired, the coordinator should instruct the contractor to use question 2 as a screening question. If a respondent has had no contact with the court, the interviewer should skip questions 4-18.

Data Collection. The contractor trains interviewers with regard to the questionnaire to ensure standardization in the data collection process. The contractor then conducts the telephone interviews with the sample drawn according to the specifications in the contractor’s approved proposal.

Data Analysis and Report Preparation. The contractor ensures the data are entered into a computer file and checked for accuracy. The contractor then analyzes the data and prepares a report, which should include the percentage of each response for each question and highlight the areas in which the court is perceived as performing well and those in which improvement is needed. Responses by subgroups of respondents (i.e., age, education, gender, income, previous contact with the court, and race/ethnicity) can also be reviewed for discernible patterns.

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⁹ Although the survey addresses the perceptions of the general public, the instrument can be modified easily to address the perception of other publics such as attorneys, jurors, and litigants.
¹⁰ Items 23 to 29 of the questionnaire are relevant to Measure 1.5.3. The items seek information on the kinds of people who do not access the courts and the reasons they do not. See Measure 1.5.3 in Performance Area 1, Access to Justice, for more information.

Go to Form 5.1.3

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