NCJ Number
110465
Date Published
1988
Length
68 pages
Annotation
A scale for assessing perceptions of procedural justice was developed and used to test hypotheses about the perceived procedural fairness of court and mediation hearings.
Abstract
The scales rested on the concept of procedural justice explained by Thibaut and Walker. Development of the scale began with a pool of items designed to represent 13 domains of procedural justice as identified in the literature. The item pool was pilot tested and reviewed by procedural justice experts, who rated the items in regard to their clarity, their perceived relationship to procedural justice, and their membership in different domains. A 75-item preliminary procedural justice scale was administered to 219 subjects drawn from psychology classes at The George Washington University. The subjects watched videotapes or read descriptions of hearings determined to be fair or unfair. They then completed the preliminary procedural justice scale and a brief questionnaire covering their perceptions of overall fairness of the process and outcome. Item analysis, reliability testing, model building, and model testing by means of confirmatory factor analysis were used to develop a final procedural justice scale composed of 30 items and 7 subscales. The subscales were the parties' opportunity to present evidence, coercion, fairness of the third party, time and cost of the procedure, clarity of the rules, overall fairness, and respect for the parties. The scale distinguished between fair and unfair hearings, but methodological problems prevented examining differences between court and mediation hearings. Literature review, tables, figures, 75 references, and appended tables and study instrument.