AJCJ, Vol. XI, No.l (1987)

PERCEPTIONS OF JURY DUTY: SATISFACTION AND OVERALL IMPRESSION*

J. LANGLEY MILLER and JOHN JOSEPH SLOAN I I I Purdue University

ABSTRACT

A jury service exit questionnaire that was designed to measure satisfaction with and overall impression of jury duty was administered to a satura- tion sample of 2,947 respondents by court clerks serving Distr ict or Circuit courts in nine counties in southeastern Michigan. For those sworn to jury duty, global satisfaction with the jury experience is found to be influenced by perceptions of t r i a l characteristics and by the extent of participation in the jury system. The significant predictors of overall impression with the jury system are respondent age, being elected jury foreman, and deliberating a criminal rather than c iv i l case.

INTRODUCTION

The right to a t r ia l by a jury of one's peers is consistently viewed as an essential component of the American system of justice. This right, exercised in American t r ia l courts some 300,000 times each year (Hastie et a l . , 1983), makes the U.S. the leading nation in the use of the jury t r ia l to determine gui l t or innocence in allegations of criminal wrongdoings and civi l confl ict resolution.

The right to a jury t r i a l for the accused entails an obligation on the part of citizens in the community: individuals must occasionally be called to serve as jurors, foregoing otherwise planned work,

*An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the lgB5 Meetings of the North Central Sociological Association. This research was funded in part by the Michigan State Supreme Court. We acknowledge the contributions made to this paper by members of the Sorrento Seminar and by anonymous reviewers. Patrick C. Easto provided the inspiration for writing the f i r s t as well as the final draft of this paper.

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as well as educational, family, and social act iv i t ies. For some citizens, jury service is considered to be among the most important civic duties performed. For others, jury duty provides the only opportunity to experience the workings of justice (National Center for State Courts, 1978). Consequently, i t might be assumed that the courts would take great effort to ensure that jury service is a satisfying experience for citizens. I t would seem also that making the experience an agreeable one would garner support from the general population for one of the basic U.S. institutions. Accordingly, two lines of inquiry are the focus of this research concerned with perceptions of jury duty in southeastern Michigan: First, to sketch a general picture of jurors' perceptions, individuals' judgments of overall impression and satisfaction with jury service are summarized. Second, to suggest approaches for improving juror perceptions, an analysis aimed at identifying the factors that account for positive jury experiences are presented and discussed.

RESEARCH ON JUROR PERCEPTIONS

Overall impression with jury service. Surveys of t r i a l juror 's perceptions or opinions generally found that respondents tended to be highly impressed with jury service, believing that jury services were useful and provided fairness in our courts (Bennack, lgBJ). A recent study of selected Pennsylvania counties conducted by the National Center for State Courts (IgBJ) reported that 81% of al l individuals called to serve on jury duty indicated they were "favorably impressed" with jury service. Queried with a binary yes-no response format, the proportion of favorably impressed individuals increased to Bg% among those actually selected to deliberate the evidence presented in criminal or c iv i l t r ia ls .

Consider that t r ia l jurors are lay persons, i .e . , citizens who take the responsibility of weighing the evidence presented by legal experts, prosecutors and defense attorneys, in order to return a verdict. Only a few rules guide the deliberations of these lay persons who are granted the court's authority to judge fellow citizens accused of serious criminal or c iv i l wrongdoing. The responsibility taken by jurors, and the authority or power granted to jurors, leads one to postulate that the jury t r i a l symbolizes American justice, and perhaps more generally, the

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uniquely American form of participatory government. Since the jury t r ia l symbolizes American justice, researchers should fu l ly expect to find that most citizens are positively impressed with the idea of jury service.

The actual experience of jury duty, however, can tarnish the perhaps idealistic yet very positive impression of jury service. Jury duty varies considerably, sometimes requiring weeks or months of time. Some of the time required to serve a term of jury duty can be "idle" time, i .e . , time spent waiting to be called for voir dire. The personal costs associated with jury duty also vary considerably among citizens. The mother and sole caretaker of a pre-school child, for instance, may experience more inconveniences associated with jury duty than a retired person who has no responsibilities for dependent children. I t is our contention that although researchers should expect most citizens to be favorably impressed with the notion of jury duty, researchers should also expect individuals to indicate considerable variation in the satisfaction or dissatisfaction they experience as a result of the actual term of their jury duty.

Satisfaction with_jury duty. Until the IgTOs, systematic efforts to make jury duty satisfying or rewarding for citizens were either neglected by the courts or essentially ineffective in positively influencing citizens called to deliberate the gui l t or innocence of their peers. In 1966 Judge Irving Kaufman called attention to the crucial problem of ineffective use of jurors' time:

"Every year thousands of citizens are summoned for jury duty . . . [the] sad fact however, is that an uncon- scionable amount of the average juror's time is wasted, waiting to be called f o r service in a particular case. Indeed, sometimes a prospective juror is never selected to participate in the single case during . . . several weeks of duty" (1966:1026).

The problem of wasted or under-utilized juror time became a focal point for many investigations of jury systems during the lgTOs and the 1980s. Researchers consistently found that perceptions of "too much

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waiting around" is the typical complaint expressed by many jurors. The identif ication of this crucial source of juror dissatisfaction is summarized and elaborated by two distinctive areas of inquiry. One area of study, consisting mostly of basic research, focuses primarily on individuals' judgments or perceptions of their experiences as jurors. A second area of research is expl ic i t ly evaluative or policy oriented, designed to provide the courts with innovative methods for managing their jury system more effectively by us ing such techniques as shortening the length of service time, increasing the fees paid to jurors, and using "stand-by" jurors.

One of the early studies that focused on the relationship between juror attitudes and idle time was conducted by Merrill and Schrage (Ig?O) in the Western District of Missouri. The respondents surveyed were f i r s t asked before they began service, and once again upon completion of jury duty, how they fe l t about being called to serve. Thirty-one percent of the respondents indicated that before jury service began, they held a positive attitude about serving, while 59% indicated a neutral attitude. Upon comple- tion of service, only 25% of respondents reported a neutral attitude while 70% reported a positive a t t i - tude toward jury service. These jurors typically perceived "waiting time" during their terms of service as necessary. However, among those who perceived the amount of idle t ime spent waiting around as "significant," researchers found that the amount of idle t ime spent was associated with less positive views of jury service.

Based on a survey of more than 5,000 New York City jurors conducted in 1972, Simon (1975) reported that on average, about 62% of all jurors' time was spent waiting in the jury room. All told, 70% of jurors spent more than 20 hours in the waiting room over a typical two-week period of service, 20% spent more than 40 hours waiting, and 6% of the 5,000 jurors surveyed reported that they had spent a11 their jury service time in the waiting room, and never became involved in selection to a case. Jurors studied by Simon identified both poor fac i l i t ies and the amount of waiting time as major problems with their term of jury service.

The id le time problem was also i d e n t i f i e d by Pabst et a l . (1976) in t h e i r study of 12 state and 6 federal

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dis t r ic t courts that together called some 3,000 citizens to jury duty during fiscal year 1975. Along with the problem of "waiting around," two related areas of concern-long terms of service, and not being selected to a case at least once during service--were identified as factors that negatively affected juror satisfaction with service. Contrary to popular assumptions, Pabst et al. found that financial issues such as jury fees and lost income were at worst neutral in affecting judgments about service, and concluded:

"By shortening the length of service, involving more people, cutting down on waiting time, and seeing that each juror gets a chance to serve the courts can improve jurors' reactions and at the same time save money for themselves. The courts can also be reassured raising fees has l i t t l e effect on juror attitudes" (1976:171).

Other empirical studies (see, e.g., Ourand et al . , lg78a; Durand et a l . , lg78b; Allen, 1977; Coe, 1976; Soloman, 1976) also found that factors such as time ut i l izat ion and actual participation in the jury t r ia l affected satisfaction with jury duty.

In summary, we can conclude that when jurors form negative judgments about the length of jury service, with how his or her t ime was used, or, with the physical fac i l i t ies provided--satisfaction with the jury experience is negatively affected. Since court personnel can devise strategies for increasing satis- faction with these distinct domains of jury duty, a research agenda appropriately emerged during the IgTOs, generally called jury ut i l izat ion or jury management studies (American Bar Association, 1982; Keil i tz and Caviness, Ig80), designed to offer the courts a number of suggestions for how to manage better their jury systems.

Jury ut i l izat ion studies concentrated on identifying those Factors that allowed the courts to make either minor or sweeping jury system reforms. Some studies addressed broad aspects of jury duty, such as how to insure representative jury panels; whereas others dealt with more specific issues, such as how the courts can more ef f ic ient ly use jurors and cut down on idle or wasted juror service time.

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Michigan courts, l ike many other state courts in the US, revamped their jury system within recent years. Michigan law enacted in 1978 required many of the county courts to consider modifying their jury systems with the intentions of making jury duty less inconvenient for citizens while broadening citizen participation in the jury system (Lindsey, 1983; MacCauley and Heubel, IgBl). The research discussed below, sponsored by the Michigan Supreme Court, was concerned with jurors in nine southeastern counties: how satisfying did they perceive the jury experience? What was their overall impression of serving on jury duty? Which factors accounted for juror satisfaction and overall impression of jury duty?

RESEARCH METHODS

What is often called a saturation sampling design (Easto, 1976) was used for this study to create a juror respondent sample. Over a four month period, the clerk of the court gave out a self-administered jury service exit questionnaire to al l individuals upon completion of jury duty. Respondents were asked to f i l l out the questionnaire before they le f t the court house. All respondents were told of the voluntary nature of their participation. However, contrary to the problem of a high refusal rate that was experienced by many researchers (Sudman, 19B3), the refusal rate for this study was v i r tua l l y zero. Court clerks who participated in the study reported to researchers that jurors and prospective jurors appeared to consider their completion of the survey to be the last task associated with their term of jury duty.

The sampling technique used for this research yielded an unbiased representation of al l jurors called to jury duty in nine southeastern Michigan counties over one calendar year. I t should be noted that the saturation sampling technique in design is analogous to systematic sampling, whereby every k th member is selected from a sampling frame. As Babble and others note, this sampling technique "is functionally equivalent to simple random sampling, with a few exceptions, and i t is a more practical method" (Babbie, 19B3:199).

A t o t a l of 2,947 ind iv idua l j u ro rs make up the respondent sample. Of t h i s t o t a l , 1,311 were sworn to a cr imina l or c i v i l case. The remaining survey

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participants completed their term of jury without ever serving on a case. That is, they were either excused at, or they were never called to voir dire. On average, the individuals who did not serve on a case spent a total of 4 days serving jury duty. Those who were sworn to c iv i l cases served an average of 4 days while those sworn to deliberate criminal cases served an average of 5 days.

The questionnaire given out to these juror- respondents contains a total of 24 questions, many reflecting items constructed by the Center for Jury Studies (see Easto, 1976). Jurors were polled on their views of juror service time, the number of times called for service; and, i f sworn to a case, the importance of various parts of the t r i a l , how attorneys can improve their work with jurors, and so forth. Additionally, some questionnaire items requested personal background information.

A socio-demographic profi le of the respondent sample shows that 55% of the jurors are female, 7B.6% are white, the typical age of the respondent fal ls within the 31-45 category, and the typical personal income is $15,000 or more. More than 29% of the sample received some college education with an additional 14% having completed the baccalaureate. Nearly 12% of the respondents attained graduate or professional degrees.

DEPENDENT MEASURES

We are concerned especially with three different types of dependent measures derived from the jury service exit questionnaire. First a single item measure of overall impression of jury services is explored. Second, questionnaire items that measure satisfaction with different domains of jury duty are analyzed. Third, a summated score representing global satisfaction with jury duty is developed and examined. Inspecting the distributions of these three types of dependent measures allows us to achieve the f i r s t objective of this research, namely to sketch a general picture of jurors' perceptions of jury service.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

As discussed above, prior research designed to examine the question of overall impression with jury duty found that respondents, whether they were sworn

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jurors or prospective jurors, tended to be favorably impressed with the jury system. The major limitation of al l prior research findings, however, was that they are based on a binary or nominal level response measure. The earl ier studies of overall impression asked respondents to indicate "yes" or "no" to a question such as "Are you favorably impressed with the jury system?"

One unique characteristic of this study is that the overall impression question is designed as an ordinal level measure. I t is intended to capture various levels of favorable impression with jury service. Thus, the question "What is your overall impression of jury duty?" has Likert- l ike response categories, ranging from "very negative" to "very positive." Numerical codes from 1 to 4 are assigned to responses, with the high score representing the most favorable impression.

As shown in Panel A of Table l , the mean response to the overall impression item (3.353) indicates that jurors, as well as prospective jurors, do indeed hold relat ively positive views of jury duty. l As shown in Panel B of Table l , more than 50% of al l respon- dents give a "very positive" rating and 35.3% give a "somewhat positive" rating. Only 11.5% of the jurors surveyed report a "somewhat negative" impression, with a mere 2.1% of the 2,947 respondents indicating a "very negative" overall impression of jury service.

These empirical data replicate but refine earl ier findings regarding overall impression of jury duty. Southeastern Michigan jurors, generally speaking, are favorably impressed with the jury system. However, we do find variation in their responses to the overall impression question, one that by research design, permits respondents to indicate the extent to which they are favorably impressed with the jury system.

SATISFACTION WITH DOMAINS OF JURY DUTY

Panel A of Table 2 shows the d is t r ibu t ions of responses to six separate questionnaire items, each designed as an ordinal level measure to capture the respondent's extent of sa t is fac t ion with a speci f ic domain of ju ry duty. Responses to these six questions were coded on a 5 point scale, with code 1 repre- senting the "very poor" response and code 5 representing the "very good" response.

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(A)

R 3.353

Table 1

Overall Impression Scores

Overall Impressiqn of 3ury Service

s N

�9 7 6 6 2,811

{B) Distribution of Overall Impression Score~

Very Negative 2.1%

Somewhat Negative 11.5%

Somewhat Positive 35.5%

Very Positive 51.1%

(A)

Table 2

Distributions of Juror Satisfaction Scores

Satisfacti_~o~with Specific Domains of Jury Service

s N

Parking Facilit ies 3.394 1.290 2,892

Physical Comforts 3.665 .gll 2,840

Eating Facilit ies 3.32B .ggl 2,535

Scheduling of Time 3.353 1.03g 2,808

Orientation 4.268 .727 2,825

Treatment by Court 4.567 .623 2,860 Personnel

(B) Global Satisfaction with Jury Duty

s N

Summed scores 22.623 3.70? 2,393

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Three of the questionnaire items used to measure domains of satisfaction, i .e . , those referring to "Parking," "Physical Comforts," and "Eating Faci l i t ies," reflect those mundane aspects of serving on jury duty that unfortunately can make the jury experience unpleasant or inconvenient. The "Scheduling of Time" item, as discussed above, was often found by researchers to be the key to juror satisfaction. Jurors and prospective jurors who perceived that their jury duty time was wasted time or time spent ineffectively, according to all prior research on this question, were unlikely to view the jury experience as a positive one.

Based on findings from the juror management type studies, two questionnaire items, "Orientation" and "Treatment by Court Personnel" are included in this research to measure satisfaction with what the courts and their personnel can do to give jurors knowledge and expectations concerning the actual operations of the jury system.

As shown in Panel A of fable 2, Michigan jurors are most satisfied with their orientation and treatment by court personnel. The mean scores for these two items, 4.268 and 4.567, are not very dispersed. Most of the individuals called to jury duty in southeastern Michigan appear to be highly satisfied with what the courts do to introduce them to the expectations associated with jury duty.

GLOBAL SATISFACTION

Responses to the six satisfaction items are summed to form a global satisfaction measure, reflecting the respondent's overall perceived satisfaction with the different domains or aspects of jury service. Since each i tem concerning satisfaction with a certain domain of jury service was rated on a five point scale, the global satisfaction score ranges from 6 to 30 points.

The d e c i s i o n to sum scores across the s i x d i s t i n c t domains of s a t i s f a c t i o n i s based on the r e s u l t s of confirmatory factor analysis (Long, 1983). The confirmatory factor analysis 2 shows that responses to the separate questionnaire items intended to measure satisfaction with distinctive domains of jury duty load nearly equally on two factors, named "convenience" and "orientation" which are related at

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the level of .719. The adjusted goodness of f i t index for the final confirmatory factor model containing the six separate items is .999. Simply stated, the confirmatory factor analysis suggests that weighting the separate items to summarize adequately the respondent's global satisfaction with the jury duty experience is not necessary. The simple sum of satisfaction scores is an adequate expression of global satisfaction. Moreover, i t is a preferred measure for our research purposes, because a summated score is readily interpreted by social scientists as well as by court personnel who take the responsibility of promoting satisfaction with the jury experience.

Panel B of Table 2 shows the distribution of the sum of responses to the six satisfaction items. This distribution shows that jurors are relatively satis- fied with the jury duty experience. The mean of the distribution is 22.623 with a standard deviation of 3.707. Similar to what we find with respect to overall impression, southeastern Michigan jurors appear to be relatively satisfied overall with their jury experiences. Some jurors, however, are somewhat dissatisfied, as indicated by the dispersion of the global satisfaction scores.

EXPLAINING OVERALL IMPRESSION AND GLOBAL SATISFACTION

The second major objective of this research is to identify the factors that account for a positive or negative jury experience, as measured by respondents' perceptions of overall impression, and global satis- faction. As shown above, not al l jurors hold equally positive perceptions. Thus, the task here is to explain observed variations in the dependent variables.

Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis (Hanushek and Jackson, 1977) is used to account for variance in perceptions among those survey respondents who report that they were actually sworn to a c iv i l or criminal t r ia l (N = 1,311).3 Based on the general research expectations guiding the analysis, a single equation multiple regression model was specified to explain subjective judgments of the jury experience as a function of personal background characteristics, variables regarding the adjudicated case, and the person~ involvement as a juror. The two dependent variables in the multiple regression analyses are the single item overall impression scores and the global

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satisfaction scores, i . e . , the sum of the ratings of the six separate satisfaction items.

The f inal function estimated is of the form:

Y = B ~ + XBDGi + XBDRi + + B2E ~ XBDCi BIA

B3ES + B4AS �9 B5IC + BBD �9 XBDF i § B7P ~ e

where B o is the intercept and B k is the part ial regression coefficient of the kth variable.

OG = Respondent gender dummy with females omitted DR = Respondent race dummy with black omitted A = Respondent age in categories (18-30) (31-45)

(>4s) E = Respondent educational attainment in years DC = Case type dummy with civil trial omitted ES = Evidence Salience AS = Argument Salience IC = Improvement Checklist on a 0 - 6 scale O = Oefendant Appearance on a 1 - 3 point scale OF = Foreman dummy with not elected foreman

omitted P = Participation

= Stochastic error term with the usual OLS assumptions

Y = Overall Satisfaction with jury duty on a l - 4 point scale Global Satisfaction with jury duty on a 6 - 30 point scale

Participation in the above model represents the total number of times a respondent was called to jury duty and the total number of days spent serving jury duty. Evidence Salience is the sum of responses to two related questions, one concerning the perceived importance of the evidence presented at trial, and one concerning the perceived importance of exhibits presented at the trial. The Argument Salience measure is the sum of responses to items regarding the perceived importance of the opening arguments, the closing arguments, and the judge's instructions to the jury. The Improvement Checklist consists of six statements of possible things that attorneys can do to improve their work with jurors. Respondents were instructed to check all items they believe attorneys should do. A checked item is coded 1. Thus, the checklist variable has a range of 0 to 6 points.

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satisfaction scores, i . e . , the sum of the ratings of the six separate satisfaction items.

The f inal function estimated is of the form:

Y = B ~ + XBDGi + XBDRi + + B2E ~ XBDCi BIA

B3ES + B4AS �9 B5IC + BBD �9 XBDF i § B7P ~ e

where B o is the intercept and B k is the part ial regression coefficient of the kth variable.

OG = Respondent gender dummy with females omitted DR = Respondent race dummy with black omitted A = Respondent age in categories (18-30) (31-45)

(>4s) E = Respondent educational attainment in years DC = Case type dummy with civil trial omitted ES = Evidence Salience AS = Argument Salience IC = Improvement Checklist on a 0 - 6 scale O = Oefendant Appearance on a 1 - 3 point scale OF = Foreman dummy with not elected foreman

omitted P = Participation

= Stochastic error term with the usual OLS assumptions

Y = Overall Satisfaction with jury duty on a l - 4 point scale Global Satisfaction with jury duty on a 6 - 30 point scale

Participation in the above model represents the total number of times a respondent was called to jury duty and the total number of days spent serving jury duty. Evidence Salience is the sum of responses to two related questions, one concerning the perceived importance of the evidence presented at trial, and one concerning the perceived importance of exhibits presented at the trial. The Argument Salience measure is the sum of responses to items regarding the perceived importance of the opening arguments, the closing arguments, and the judge's instructions to the jury. The Improvement Checklist consists of six statements of possible things that attorneys can do to improve their work with jurors. Respondents were instructed to check all items they believe attorneys should do. A checked item is coded 1. Thus, the checklist variable has a range of 0 to 6 points.

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Table 3

Satisfaction and Overall Impression With Jury Services

Satisfaction I

b (SE)

Juror Background Characteristics

Gender (Male Dummy)

Race (White Dummy)

Education 2

Age 3

Involvement as Juror

-.037 (.20g)

.153 (.249) -.187" (.OgO)

.830"* (.132)

Foreman (Dummy)

Participation 4

Characteristics of the Case

.263 (.451) - .207"** (.024)

Criminal Trial (Dummy)

Evidence Salience 5

Argument Salience6

Improvement Checklist 7

Defendant Appearance

.414 (.214)

.095 (.050)

.075"* (.028) -.310"* (.104)

.241 (.138)

Satisfaction

Overall Impression I

b (SE)

-.050 (.045)

.080 (.054)

.007 (.o2o) -.059" (.029)

.236" (.098) -.OlO (.005)

.202*** (.046)

.ooe (.Oll) -.004 (.006) -.003 (.023) -.OO1 (.030)

.070"** (.006)

*** p less than .OO1 ** p less than .O1

* p less than .05

(Continued)

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Table 3 -- Continued Overall Impression 1.470"**

(.136)

Intercept 16.262*** 1.810"** (.91e) (.221)

R 2 .241 *** .158***

N l ,311 l ,311

IThe satisfaction measure ranges from 5 to 30 points, with 30 representing the highest possible score. The overall impression measure ranges from 1 to 4 points with a score of 4 representing the most favorable impression.

2years of formal education completed is coded into categories with code 1 representing less than a high school diploma and code 5 representing graduate or professional degrees.

3Age is coded in categories with code representing age 45 and older.

4The number of times called to jury duty and the total number of days serving jury duty are summed to measure participation amounts.

5Response to questions regarding perceived salience of exhibits presented during the t r ia l and of the evidence presented are summed.

6Responses to perceived salience of arguments, closing arguments, and instructions to the jury are summed.

opening judge's

7Respondents considered 6 items that attorneys could do to improve their work with jurors. Items checked were coded l and the sum of items checked is used as the improvement checklist measure.

Of the several measures intended to capture how perceptions of case charac ter is t i cs inf luence overal l impression, only the dummy variable for criminal t r ia l is significantly related to judgments. Compared to jurors sworn to c iv i l t r ia ls , those sworn to

3B

criminal t r ia ls are more impressed overall with jury services.

Although overall impression scores are not influenced by many factors associated with the jury experience, satisfaction with jury duty appears to be influenced by two different types of perceptions regarding case characteristics. First, jurors who view the evidence as most salient and those who view attorneys' arguments and the judge's instructions as very important tend to have high global satisfaction scores. Second, those jurors who check more items regarding what attorneys can do to improve their work with jurors are less satisfied with their jury experience that those who check fewer items.

In summary, we conclude that features of the t r i a l process have at best a moderate influence on the overall impression of jury duty among those sworn to deliberate c iv i l and criminal cases in southeastern Michigan courts. Global satisfaction with jury service, however, is influenced by different dimen- sions of the t r i a l and by the individual's experiences as a juror.

INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

The empirical findings concerning selected Michigan jurors, consistent with findings from studies examining jurors' perceptions in a wide variety of jurisdictions, a11ow the inference that the jury experience is viewed as a positive one by most citizens called to participate in criminal and c iv i l t r ia ls . Not a11 jurors, however, are positively impressed by the jury system or highly satisfied with their jury experiences. The dependent measures analyzed in this research enable an investigation of what accounts for the extent of overall impression and global satisfaction with jury service, frequently observed yet rarely explained by the social science and legal communities.

Our findings suggest that overall impression and global satisfaction are highly and positively related to each other. From the multiple regression analysis, we see that those who are positively impressed with the jury system, ceteris Rarabus, are those most l ike ly to report they are very satisfied with their jury experiences.

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An examination of the s ta t is t ica l ly significant predictors of overall impression suggests that neither the extent to which jurors participate in jury service, nor their perceptions of what attorneys can do to improve their work with jurors influence overall impression of the jury system. Since overall impression is not influenced by such experience-based factors; and, since satisfaction with jury duty is indeed influenced by a positive impression of jury duty, we posit that the courts can garner positive citizen perceptions of j u r y duty by maintaining good relations within their communities. This premise is supported empirically by the major findings from a nationwide study conducted by the National Center for State Courts (1978). The study recommended that the state courts should provide knowledge and information about the workings of our justice system to citizens.

Variations in how satisfied jurors are with their term of jury duty are explained in part by the juror 's judgments of what attorneys can do to improve their work with jurors, by the juror 's judgments of the importance of opening and closing arguments, and by perceived importance of t r ia l evidence and exhibits. These findings imply that the courts should focus on the actual experience of jury duty to improve juror satisfaction with a term of jury duty.

Consistent with prior research, this study implies that the personal inconveniences associated with jury service and the use of jurors' t ime are crucial factors capable of decreasing satisfaction. The participation score, a measure of the total amount of participation in the jury process, is negatively and signif icantly related to global satisfaction. In our view, this indicates that the more time and personal involvement a citizen is asked to give to the courts, and the more personal inconveniences the individual is asked to bear, the less satisfied he or she is with the jury service. These 1,311 sworn jurors indicate that the courts should use a limited amount of their time ef f ic ient ly i f jury service is to be a civic duty that is perceived as a satisfactory one.

Courts troubled by the notion that unsat is factory j u r y experiences can lead to too many c i t izens seeking exemptions from ju ry service or too l i t t l e community approval of U.S. t r i a l courts can be informed by the inferences drawn from th is research: personal incon- veniences associated with protracted or extended j u r y

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service can tarnish otherwise favorable impressions of citizen participation in the t r ia l process. In a|l domains of l i fe , individuals seek a sense of personal efficacy (Lewis, 1978). Citizens called to deliberate the gui l t or innocence of their peers can experience a sense of efficacy, focusing on their responsibilities to weigh evidence, especially when asked to invest a reasonable amount of t ime and commitment to jury service.

FOOTNOTES

lNote that we found no significant differences in the mean ratings characterizing the overall impression scores; or in the separate satisfaction item scores, or the global satisfaction scores (discussed below) between those who were sworn to a case and those who were not sworn to a case. This is probably due to the relatively similar amounts of jury seryice time required by jurors who were sworn to a case and by those who were never called to voir dire or excused at voir dire.

2Since the results of the confirmatory factor analysis are not used ( i .e . , analyzed) in this research, only the basic findings from the final model specified are referenced here. Essentially, the confirmatory factor analysis just i f ies the decision to create a summed score to represent global satisfaction. Contact the paper's authors for more detailed reports on the confirmatory factor analysis referenced here.

3Most of the jury service exit questionnaire items ask respondents to indicate their views pertaining to their experiences as a sworn juror. Thus, any analysis, such as the one reported here, that examines views related to the jury experience must be limited to a subsample of the total sample of polled jurors.

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