Questions from the Ministry of Justice:
Dispute resolution
Which types of case are most likely to achieve uptake and settlement via dispute
resolution, and how is this affected by the type of dispute and the parties themselves? Are compliance rates better for settlements agreed via dispute resolution compared to court?
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Dispute resolution
What types of mediator behaviour are effective for specific types of users and disputes and how does this affect proceedings and outcomes? What regulation, for example training, accreditation and standards, is proportionate and appropriate to promote good practice and consistency in dispute resolution services?
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Dispute resolution
What are the best ways to define and measure the quality of dispute resolution
outcomes, for example, legality satisfaction, compliance and problem resolution? What frameworks are most appropriate to assess different aspects of quality and how can we collect appropriate data?
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Legal support and advice
How can we better understand links between social and criminal justice issues, to
identify pressures that lead towards offending and reoffending? How do we provide offenders, victims, and families with legal advice and support to help them avoid crime and rebuild their lives?
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Legal support and advice
How can we help people to identify and select the most appropriate type of support for their problem and their individual needs as early as possible? For example, situations that can be resolved without formal legal advice and situations where legal support should be encouraged.
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Analytical and research methods
Statistical techniques: to better measure effects within our research and the analysis of our data; learning from new methodologies to analyse and interrogate data, including clustering effects, multi-level modelling, power calculations for complex study designs and dealing with bias and paradox types that are highly prevalent in our datasets (self-selection and demographic bias; Simpson’s paradox and ecological correlations), missing information and low frequencies.
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Analytical and research methods
Social research methods: including qualitative research and ethnographic methods to give a richer understanding of the experience of, and interactions with, the justice system; advances in ‘big qual’ methodology; quantitative social research methods such as sequence and cluster analysis, and use of online methodologies.
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Analytical and research methods
Simulation, agent-based modelling and hybrid modelling methods: using optimisation methods; forecasting techniques; resource modelling, and performance frameworks to inform evidence-based effective and efficient operational delivery across the MOJ estate.
Ministry of Justice, 2025
Analytical and research methods
Prototyping: including agile design methods to understand user needs, test core mechanisms and assumptions early, and inform continuous improvement; use of AI to create synthetic participants and analyse data in the very early stages of policy development.
Ministry of Justice, 2025