While, in the UK, attitudes to the criminal justice system have been routinely investigated less effort has been made to measure attitudes to the civil justice system. However, globally, there are increasingly numerous examples of studies of attitudes to civil justice. Robust standardised scales are important to establishing change and difference between groups; for example, in the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. Past focus has been on developing ‘composite indicators’. This paper sees the application of modern psychometric methods to the construction of ‘reflective’ instruments to measure single unidimensional attitude dimensions. Drawing on relevant theoretical frameworks, we administered an item pool of 35 attitude questions to a sample of 1061 adults across England and Wales. Principal component analysis was used to identify attitude domains, followed by Rasch analysis to construct scales with acceptable psychometric properties. An Inaccessibility of Justice (IOJ) scale and a Perceived Inequality of Justice (PIJ) scale resulted. Respondents who regarded themselves as having handled past civil legal problems poorly or having experienced unfair outcomes had higher IOJ and PIJ scores. Negative accounts of lawyers or courts from others were also associated with higher scores. Our substantive findings help explain how negative experiences of problem resolution can result in ‘frustrated resignation’ for later problems, and show the importance of positive experiences and accounts of the justice system in maintaining public support. The scales have broad justice policy utility and the methods provide a template for future related scale development.

中文翻译：

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衡量民事司法的可及性和平等

尽管在英国，对刑事司法制度的态度已得到常规调查，但在衡量对民事司法制度的态度方面却付出了较少的努力。但是，在全球范围内，越来越多的关于民事司法态度研究的例子。稳健的标准化量表对于建立群体之间的变化和差异非常重要；例如，根据联合国可持续发展目标16.3。过去的重点是开发“综合指标”。本文介绍了现代心理测量方法在构造用于测量单个一维姿态尺寸的“反射式”仪器中的应用。根据相关的理论框架，我们对英格兰和威尔士的1061名成年人进行了35个态度问题的项目汇总。主成分分析用于识别态度域，然后进行Rasch分析以构建具有可接受的心理测量特性的量表。结果导致了司法不可及（IOJ）量表和司法可感知不平等（PIJ）量表。认为自己过去的民事法律问题处理不善或结果不公平的受访者的IOJ和PIJ得分较高。来自其他人的律师或法院的负面陈述也与更高的分数相关。我们的实质性发现有助于说明问题解决的消极经历如何导致对后来的问题的“沮丧的辞职”，并表明积极的经历和司法系统的账目在维持公众支持方面的重要性。