Questions for Research

Abstract

The list of research questions that follows reflects an attempt to cull all the research ideas found in the original transcript. Hence some of these ideas may be missing from the edited version of the transcript reproduced above. In this list each research idea is phrased in the form of a question, which at least one of the conference participants would like to see answered. Other than that, no editing was attempted. Some research questions should have a high priority for investigation while others should have a low priority or might not be worth the cost at all. Answering this group of questions would require the gamut of available research techniques: survey research, experimentation, quasi-experimentation, participant observation, and pure conceptual thinking. Readers will have to make their own judgments about which questions are worth answering and how one might proceed to do so. I would like to suggest one research priority. Government legal services are being reorganized by the Legal Services Corporation and private group legal service plans are proliferating. We should develop some means of systematically collecting comparable data from these legal service delivery organizations (LSDOs). I would suggest the creation of a research organization that would develop protocols to insure that comparable data were routinely collected by different LSDOs. The organization itself might collect additional information relating to questions of interest. Ideally this research organization would be funded in part by the LSDOs, for it would perform valuable services for them. It might act as a clearing-house so that information and techniques acquired in one LSDO would be available to all LSDOs. It might operate a central computer facility to process information collected by the different LSDOs and to report results back to them. It might maintain a staff of experts to help nascent LSDOs determine the market for their services and to help established LSDOs institute quality evaluation systems. One hopes that it could instruct the LSDOs in the ways that research is relevant to their concerns and that it would be trusted with rela-