Date of Award

1-1-2013

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

Josef Korbel School of International Studies

First Advisor

Karen A. Feste, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Rashmi Goel

Third Advisor

Cynthia Fukami

Keywords

Community-based, Cost-analysis, Cost-utility, Mediation, Methodology

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to develop a new approach to evaluating the cost-effectiveness of community based mediation programs in order to promote a more robust methodology for researching community based mediation in general, and to provide a means for the favorable claims of community based mediation to be accurately validated.

A methodology was created based on multi-attribute cost utility analysis. This analysis involves studying two programs simultaneously: a community based mediation program and a corresponding court adjudication program/institution. These programs are evaluated on three measures of effectiveness or attributes: satisfaction rating, number of successful cases processed, and compliance level. Combined, these attributes constitute the total quality of justice delivered by the program.

Each program is evaluated for cost; specifically, the costs involved in delivering the quality of justice. These costs are broken down into component parts, referred to as ingredients. The sum of all ingredients for each program represents the total cost to deliver the intervention. After the attributes have been evaluated they are converted to a common utility scale and combined into a single measure of utility using the additive multi-attribute utility function. This value is then compared to the cost of the program to create the final cost-utility ratio. This ratio represents the cost required to increase utility by one point for that program. A cost-utility ratio is created for both programs and thus one is able to see at a glance the difference in both effectiveness and cost.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Cory William Stufflebeem

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

104 p.

Discipline

Alternative dispute resolution

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