Thanks go out to Barry Edwards, who forwarded his organization’s (Center for Legal Solutions) collection of Practical Research on Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Here’s the advertisement for an upcoming presentation I’ll be giving in Washington, DC for the Interagency ADR Working Group. Attendance is open, just RSVP in advance.
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ADR LUNCHTIME SERIES
Learning from Our Practice: Connecting Curiosity with Evaluation Tools
to Learn from and Assess ADR Programs and Practices
What is the relationship between evaluation [...]

Socrates’ observation that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology 38a) just got some nice supporting empirical evidence, at least insofar that an examined life in dire circumstances might be far more livable.
Ok, in reality, the study seems weak. There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of self-reported attitude shifts that aren’t triangulated with [...]

It’s nice to be able to run Windows-only applications without having to spend much time suffering the operating system. Since making the switch from SPSS to JMP for statistics work, there really is only one Windows-based application that I have to spend much time in: QSR’s NVivo, which is a tool for analyzing qualitative data. [...]

I just came across a really nice bit of work by Jennifer Shack at the Resolution Systems Institute:
Bibliographic Summary of Cost, Pace, and Satisfaction Studies of Court-Related Mediation Programs.

Here’s an oldie but goodie: a RAND’s “Evaluation of Mediation and Early Neutral Evaluation Under the 1990 Civil Justice Reform Act”
Mediation advocates are quick to point toward research that strongly supports the value of the work we do, but it’s important to also keep in mind the studies that have been less-than-enthusiastic or definitive [...]

Well folks, it’s almost time to hop on a plane and head out to Phoenix for the annual ACR conference. I hope that blog readers who are attending the conference will make a point of saying hi.
If you’d like to catch my presentation, it’s at 2-3:30 on Thursday:
2.10 Researching Dialogue: Lessons Learned About [...]

My favorite online survey tool, Surveymonkey, just got a face lift. The interface is improved, new question types have been added, and they’ve thrown included survey templates to help folks get started.

Three new and interesting developments in research software:
1. A new version of JMP, SAS’s user-friendly and graphic-rich stat software, has been released: JMP 7. Technically the Windows version of JMP 7 has been out for a couple of months, but the Mac version has just been rolled out.
I suppose it makes [...]

It’s always nice (and all-too-rare) to find examples of good work that’s well-coupled with evaluation research. At first glance, this seems to be one such case:
More than 1,700 potential college students and parents who earn less than $45,000 annually and have their taxes done at select H&R Block offices will get free help [...]