If your court’s goal was to have specific impacts—for example, to increase public trust or people’s knowledge about the courts or to make progress understanding or solving a problem—your plan should evaluate how well you achieved those impacts.
All six pilot projects had engagement goals focused on either influencing the public and/or improving their courts. The common evaluation questions used in this pilot project were designed to track impacts among participants in these areas.
For example, the pilot teams identified building trust, informing and improving court processes, and education about their courts to community members as objectives of pilot projects.
Pre- and Post-Survey Items
Pre-post survey items are administered on both a pre-survey and a post-survey. The items then can be compared to see if people changed over the course of the engagement. For example, by assigning numbers (e.g., 1 to 7 or 1 to 5 depending on the scale) to the ordered answers chosen, you can then compare whether each person’s answer increased or decreased or stayed the same over the course of the engagement. In this way, you can ascertain if many/most people increased, decreased, or stayed the same in trust or their perceptions of the courts.
Note: To see how the questions are formatted and phrased in context, view the pre and post surveys.
- How much do you trust or distrust the [name of] Court? (followed by an ordered 7-point scale ranging from "Trust a lot," "Trust some," "Trust slightly," "Neutral, neither trust nor distrust," "Distrust slightly," "Distrust some," "Distrust a lot")
- How comfortable would you feel letting the [name of] Court decide a case that was important to you? (followed by an ordered 7-point scale ranging from "Very comfortable," "Somewhat comfortable," "Slightly comfortable," "Neutral: Neither comfortable nor uncomfortable," "Slightly uncomfortable," "Somewhat uncomfortable," "Very uncomfortable")
- How fair or unfair does the [name of] Court treat people of different races, genders, ages, wealth, or other characteristics? (followed by an ordered 7-point scale ranging from "Very fair," "Somewhat fair," "Slightly fair," "Neutral: Neither fair nor unfair," "Slightly unfair," "Somewhat unfair," "Very unfair")
Post-Survey Items
Post survey items are administered only on the post-survey. By examining the answers to the items, and comparing the average answers between engagements or between different types of respondents, your court can ascertain if some engagements are perceived as having more positive impacts than others, or are more helpful to some respondents than to others.
Note: To see how the questions are formatted and phrased in context, view the post surveys.
- During today’s engagement, to what degree, if any, did your knowledge of the [name of] Court increase? (followed by an ordered 5-point scale ranging from "Increased a great deal," "Increased quite a bit," "Somewhat increased," "Slightly increased," "Not at all, it stayed the same")
- How helpful were the engagement activities in making progress toward solving one or more problems? (followed by an ordered 5-point scale ranging from "Extremely helpful," "Very helpful," "Somewhat helpful," "Slightly helpful," "Not at all helpful")