The Source for Crime and Justice Data

Description & Citation--Study No. 6487

Bibliographic Description

Study No.:

6487

Title:

Metro Court Project: A Study of Mediation and Adjudication in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque), New Mexico, Small Claims Court, 1990-1992

Principal Investigator(s):

LaFree, Gary

Rack, Christine

Funding:

Fund for Research on Dispute Resolution (#G4-90-35)

Bibliographic Citation:

LaFree, Gary, and Christine Rack. Metro Court Project: A Study of Mediation and Adjudication in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque), New Mexico, Small Claims Court, 1990-1992. ICPSR06487-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1995. doi:10.3886/ICPSR06487.v1

Scope of Study

Summary:

This study used court records and interviews with disputants, litigants, and mediators in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, to compare the effects of ethnicity and gender in mediated versus adjudicated small claims disputes. Initial structured telephone interviews with both adjudicated and mediated claimants and respondents (Parts 1-4) were conducted. Follow-up questionnaires (Parts 6-8) were then administered to the initial interviewed groups. Data from mediators (Part 9) were collected from self-administered structured questionnaires. Pertinent questions from all eight survey instruments were combined into a master file (Part 5). This data collection also includes two qualitative summary files of adjudicated and mediated cases (Parts 10-11). The unit of analysis is the small claims case.

Subject Terms:

courts, criminal justice system, ethnicity, gender, mediation

Geographic Coverage:

New Mexico, United States

Time Period:
  • 1990-06--1991-10

Date of Collection:
  • 1990-09--1992-01

Universe:

All non-eviction small claims cases (less than $5,000) with adult individuals, married couples, or businesses on both sides that proceeded to hearing or mediation with both parties present.

Data Types:

administrative records data, survey data, and machine-readable text

Data Collection Notes:

(1) Parts 10 and 11 of this collection are text files that are qualitative summaries of mediated and adjudicated cases. (2) The original questionnaires are available only in hardcopy form upon request from ICPSR.

Methodology

Sample:

A random selection of adjudicated cases and a random assignment of answered claims to mediation.

Data Source:

Bernalillo County, New Mexico, small claims court records (claims, answers, and judgments) and mediated agreements

Access and Availability

Note:

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

Original ICPSR Release:

1995-12-20

Version History:

  • 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 12 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

  • 2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Mediated Case Telephone Questionnaire for Respondent
  • DS2: Mediated Case Telephone Questionnaire for Claimant
  • DS3: Adjudicated Case Telephone Questionnaire for Respondent With a Hearing
  • DS4: Adjudicated Case Telephone Questionnaire for Claimant With a Hearing
  • DS5: Master File
  • DS6: Follow-Up Questionnaire, Adjudicated, Respondent and Claimant
  • DS7: Follow-Up Questionnaire, Mediation/Agreement Reached, Respondent and Claimant
  • DS8: Follow-Up Questionnaire, Mediation/No Agreement Reached - Respondent and Claimant
  • DS9: Exit Questionnaire for Mediators
  • DS10: Qualitative Data: Summary of Each Mediated Case in Master File
  • DS11: Qualitative Data: Summary of Each Adjudicated Case in Master File
  • DS13: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 1
  • DS14: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 2
  • DS15: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 3
  • DS16: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 4
  • DS17: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 5
  • DS18: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 6
  • DS19: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 7
  • DS20: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 8
  • DS21: SAS Data Definition Statements for Part 9