Exploring Court Performance and Developing its Scale

Courts are an important part of the judiciary. To reduce the pendency of cases, measuring and improving court performance is important. With the objectives of exploring court performance and developing its scale, we conducted two interlocking studies. In study 1, we explored it conceptually. We identified the indicators of court performance through in-depth interviews of legal professionals and clients from the district courts of the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Uttarakhand (UK) (n = 51). Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Based on interviews, we generated items and refined them by using a pilot study (n = 105). After that, in Study 2, we surveyed court stakeholders to assess measurement dimensionality and reliability (n = 517). The scale’s dimensionality was tested using exploratory factor analysis and reliability was tested using Cronbach’s alpha scores. The scale indicated three dimensions: quality of judicial activity, access to justice, and public trust, and excellent internal consistency reliability (α = .959). This scale can be used to measure court performance by taking responses from legal professionals.