Justice Evaluations Research Articles

Energy justice and sustainable urban renewal: A systematic review of low-income old town communities

Improving living conditions, quality of public services and social safety nets in blighted and underdeveloped urban areas also are important aspects of urban renewal. In another way, achieving sustainable urban development requires more improvements. Equity, sustainability, and universality are core principles of sustainable development and should be integrated into urban renewal strategies. For instance, urban renewal in old town areas presents multiple challenges, including balancing public investment needs, social justice considerations, and environmental impacts. Studies have shown that inequalities often arise during implementation, disproportionately affecting low-income residents in old town areas. While energy justice is a key concept for reducing these inequalities during renewal process, however existing frameworks lack a multi-dimensional approach. This study proposes a comprehensive evaluation framework that combines sustainable development with energy justice principles during the renewal of old town areas. This framework aims to achieve equitable and sustainable development outcomes in renewal of old urban areas by systematically examining the unequal impacts on low-income groups and proposing equitable energy services and inclusive policies. The proposed equity evaluation framework includes two key components: 1) Main factors in existing renewal strategies, which include equitable access to energy resources, sustainable energy systems, affordability, and public participation. 2) Criteria for refining energy justice evaluation framework, which include accessibility, energy efficiency, community participation, and policy coordination. The research emphasizes the importance of fairness in providing affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy opportunities within urban renewal initiatives. This focus can provide rational perspective and reference for decision makers, thereby empowering vulnerable groups, giving equitable energy access and contributing to achieve sustainable urban development.

Assessing the Measurement Quality of Justice Evaluations of Earnings in Europe

How individuals perceive the fairness of their pay carries profound implications for individuals and society. Perceptions of pay injustice are linked to a spectrum of negative outcomes, including diminished well-being, poor health, increased stress, and depressive symptoms, alongside various detrimental effects in the work domain. Despite the far-reaching impact of these justice evaluations, validity evidence on their measurement in survey research is missing. Two measurement strategies dominate applied justice research with surveys: Asking for evaluations using a response scale or relying on measures of the just reward to capture fairness. It remains an unresolved question which of these two prevailing approaches—corresponding to the concepts of expressed justice and experienced justice, respectively—yields more robust and high-quality assessments, especially in cross-country research contexts where measurement consistency is critical. This study evaluates the measurement quality of these two approaches using the European Social Survey, which encompasses 29 countries. Our comparative analysis of experienced and expressed justice for gross and net earnings offers comprehensive insights into measurement choices in cross-national surveys. We find that nonresponse to income questions significantly undermines the measurement quality of experienced justice due to its dependence on actual earnings data. Moreover, while both experienced and expressed justice correlate with related concepts as anticipated, the patterns are more consistently observed in expressed justice. These findings suggest that survey practitioners aiming to measure distributive justice of earnings may favor expressed justice instruments, particularly those utilizing rating scales, for efficient and rigorous evaluation.

Integrating distributive justice in system dynamics models of sustainability transitions

AbstractSocial‐ecological‐technological transitions for decarbonisation and sustainable development goals can perpetuate or introduce environmental and socio‐economic injustices. The just transitions literature provides useful perspectives for assessing transition pathways. This paper explores integrating distributive justice into system dynamics modelling for sustainability transitions. For this purpose, we adapt existing requirements to enable the evaluation of distributive justice in model‐based support for climate planning to the specific case of system dynamics modelling. We test the requirements by using a previously developed system dynamics model to (1) gain insights into the application of the requirements and (2) reflect on their further development. Our findings underscore the importance of transparency in model assumptions and results. They suggest exploring the behaviour space of models to account for uncertainty and plurality of stakeholder values. Furthermore, they emphasise the need to discuss the implications of model results and the plurality of stakeholder values to foster deliberation and inclusive decision‐making.

Evolved and Cultural Intuitions. Highly Speculative Remarks on the Origins of our Sense of Fairness

The question of whether the sense of fairness constitutes an exclusively human trait has been answered mostly from two polar positions: the first one unambiguously affirms such exclusivity, thus denying the relevance of cognitive ethology to understand our evaluations of justice; the second one, on the contrary, postulates the existence of a (proto) sense of fairness in non-human animals, strongly related to ours, which would make cognitive ethology highly relevant to understand the mechanisms on which our evaluative practices are based. From a position of extreme caution in relation to the possibility of (eventually) offering concrete evidence in favor of innatist theses such as the one I will defend here, I will suggest that i) in line with the rupturist positions, it is possible to preserve the human exclusivity of the sense of justice, ii) in line with the continuist positions, the relevance of studies coming from cognitive ethology is guaranteed, insofar as (ex hypotesi) our evaluative practices often take as input innate psychological dispositions shared with other species. Finally, I will suggest that the concept of rationalization is central to determine in each case the possible articulation between innate dispositions and explicit justifications.

Research on Judge's Decision-making Factors and Judicial Justice Evaluation from the Perspective of Legal Psychology

From the unique and often overlooked lens of legal psychology, this paper delves deep into the intricate web of factors that shape and influence judges' decision-making processes. It meticulously examines how, while legal knowledge and professional experience form the bedrock of judicial rulings, they are not the sole or even the primary determinants of judicial outcomes.Instead, the paper argues that a judge's decisions are often subtly, yet profoundly, influenced by psychological factors and their deeply ingrained personal social backgrounds. These factors, ranging from unconscious biases to societal pressures, can have a significant impact on how a judge interprets the law and applies it to specific cases.This nuanced understanding of the judges' decision-making processes underscores the inherent complexity of evaluating judicial impartiality. The study posits that a truly comprehensive assessment of judicial fairness demands a multifaceted approach that goes beyond surface-level critiques and encompasses a wide range of standards, methodologies, and perspectives.

Examining Climate Justice in Urban Public Space Adaptation: A Thematic Synthesis of the Literature

Evaluating processes and outcomes of climate change adaptation enables learning to facilitate climate-resilient pathways and prevent potentially unjust outcomes. This study focuses on adaptation interventions in the public space whose design and management have implications for environmental, social, cultural, and climate justice. There is a mismatch between the language and scale of scientific research and the site-level operational character of these interventions. This makes it difficult to bridge theory and practice and assess climate justice in public space adaptation interventions. To bridge this gap, we develop a qualitative systematic review and analysis of current scientific literature proposing climate justice evaluation parameters applicable to public space adaptation interventions and explore possible avenues for developing more effective assessment frameworks. Results show five key themes critical to assess climate justice in adaptation interventions in public space: project impact distribution, project governance and knowledge inclusion, project communication and transparency, space perception and use, and recognition and repair of structural drivers of vulnerability. Each theme raises challenges, opportunities, and potential avenues to address the assessment of public space design in terms of climate justice. Our results are key for scientists, urban practitioners, and policymakers interested in understanding how evaluating climate justice in public space adaptation interventions can help identify potential failures, provide ways to learn from experience, and facilitate urban climate-resilient pathways.

A National Evaluation of Social Justice and Antiracism Within School Psychology Graduate Preparation Programs

As school psychologists, we have an ethical responsibility to engage in social justice and antiracist action. Specifically, graduate education programs have a significant role to play in preparing future school psychologists as social justice change agents. To facilitate effective change, graduate educators must confront potential biases in university training programs and themselves, act in culturally affirming ways, and commit to using psychological science to prepare future school psychologists to engage in advocacy and combat systemic racism within youth-serving systems. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore training efforts aimed at promoting social justice, antiracism, and multiculturalism consistent with best practices within school psychology training programs. Additionally, this study aimed to identify how programs and individual faculty members were responding to increasing calls for racial justice and social justice and the impact of the “dual pandemics” of COVID-19 and racism on their training efforts. Finally, the researchers sought to identify facilitators and barriers to training and pedagogy focused on social justice, antiracism, and multicultural issues in graduate psychology training programs. Impact Statement As graduate educators, we must examine the extent to which school psychology graduate preparation programs are using the multicultural, social justice and antiracist practices recommended in the literature. With proper training, school psychologists wield significant power in dismantling structural oppression and praxis in schools and strengthening the adoption and implementation of culturally relevant academic and social-emotional and behavioral supports. However, social justice awareness, knowledge, skills and dispositions need to be explicitly taught and cultivated as areas of competency. Graduate educators and accrediting bodies should focus on improving the quality of preservice training for school psychologists so they may successfully navigate the myriad challenges associated with systemic change and act as effective change agents in bringing about racial and social equity in schools. This study provides a snapshot of graduate training efforts in these areas to help in identifying current practices, needs, strengths and future directions for the field.

Development and psychometric testing of a questionnaire for assessment of medical science educators’ adherence to ethical principles in virtual education: exploratory sequential mixed methods study

BackgroundPrinciples of ethics are among the pillars of the teaching-learning system. Evaluation of educators’ adherence to principles of ethics in virtual education requires the use of reliable instruments. This study was carried out to develop and test the psychometric properties of a questionnaire for assessment of medical science educators’ adherence to principles of ethics in virtual education.MethodsThis is an exploratory sequential mixed methods study conducted in two parts. In the first stage (the qualitative phase), we used conventional content analysis to establish the concept of ethical principles in virtual education. Thus, 21 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 medical science professors on a face-to-face basis from March 2022 to November 2022. Subsequently, we developed the items of the questionnaire based on a review of literature and semi-structured in-depth interviews. In the second stage (the quantitative phase), psychometric features of the questionnaire were evaluated using COSMIN criteria (face validity, content validity, construct validity and internal consistency).ResultsConstruct validity was surveyed with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis via completing the questionnaire by 300 medical science professors, who were selected using convenience sampling. The results of exploratory factor analysis yielded a factor loading of the 20 items of the questionnaire to range between 0.79 and 0.98, all the values being significant. The three factors of adherence to the principles of copyright, adherence to educational principles, and justice in evaluation, which were addressed by the instrument, were verified by satisfactory values. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) fitted the data well (χ2/df = 13), RMSEA = 0.01, CFI = 0.96, NFI = 0.97, and TLI = 0.99. The total interclass correlation (ICC) of the questionnaire was estimated to be 0.90. Moreover, the reliability of the instrument measured in terms of internal consistency was estimated 0.98.ConclusionThe findings of the study indicated that the questionnaire we developed for evaluation of adherence to ethical principles of in virtual education was valid and reliable enough. Therefore, the managers in the education system can employ this instrument to assess medical science educators’ adherence to principles of ethics in virtual education.

Overall team justice and psychological strain: A daily diary study.

Drawing on the relational and uncertainty models of justice, this research investigates the consequences of daily overall team justice perceptions on employees' daily psychological strain. Specifically, we examine daily psychological safety as a mediator of the relationship between daily overall team justice evaluations and daily psychological strain. We also argue that daily overall supervisor justice moderates this mediated relationship. Using a daily diary study over 10 consecutive working days, our results confirm that daily team justice reduces employees' daily psychological strain. In addition, our findings provide evidence that daily psychological safety mediates the effects of daily justice perceptions on daily psychological strain. Results also show that the relationship between daily overall team justice and daily psychological safety is moderated by overall supervisor justice, thereby complementing the target similarity model.

An economic evaluation of restorative justice post-sentence in England and Wales.

Participation in restorative justice interventions post-sentence has been shown to reduce reoffending and mitigate harm to victims. Investment in, and access to, restorative justice remains limited in England and Wales. An economic model was developed to synthesize the available evidence in order to develop contemporary and robust estimates of the economic impact of investment in restorative justice interventions. This research focused on direct and indirect restorative justice interventions for victims and offenders post-sentence in England and Wales. Included offences were those with an identifiable victim. A model was developed to estimate the social benefit-cost ratio of restorative justice, as well as the direct financial return to the criminal justice system. The modeled benefits of restorative justice included reductions in reoffending and direct wellbeing benefits for victims. It was not possible to incorporate direct wellbeing benefits for offenders due to evidence gaps. In the model, 8% of referrals to restorative justice resulted in direct restorative justice interventions and 19% resulted in indirect Restorative justice interventions. The modeled cost of the restorative justice pathway per direct intervention was £3,394. The base case estimate for the social benefit-cost ratio of restorative justice was £14 per £1 invested, with a direct return to the criminal justice system of £4 as a result of substantial reductions in reoffending. Scenario analysis suggested a plausible range of £7 to £20 social benefit per £1 invested. Hypothetically, increasing the proportion of eligible cases referred for a restorative justice intervention from 15 to 40% could be associated with an increase in investment of £5 m, and benefits to the criminal justice system totaling £22 m, implying a net saving of £17 m. The research suggests that Restorative justice has the potential to yield a substantial social return on investment (SROI) and direct return on investment to the criminal justice system. The economic case for investment in restorative justice centers on identifying offenders with a high risk of offending and enabling them to participate in an intervention that has been repeatedly demonstrated to help them to change their behavior.

A Theoretical Exploration of Teacher Credibility and Immediacy as Influential Factors in Learning and Teaching

This review study aims to fill a research gap by examining the role of two critical teacher interpersonal behaviors, immediacy and credibility, based on existing evidence. By analyzing the available literature, this study will offer valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and researchers in the field of language education. The empirical and theoretical evidence presented in this review study unequivocally demonstrates the importance of teacher credibility and immediacy in shaping EFL learners' perceptions of classroom justice. These factors significantly impact learners' understanding and evaluation of distributive, interactional, and procedural justice, profoundly influencing their overall satisfaction and engagement in the educational process. Furthermore, the study highlights that teacher credibility is a strong predictor of learners' perceived cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning in the classroom, while teacher immediacy predicts students' perception of interactional justice. Lastly, the review examines the impact of both nonverbal and verbal teacher credibility on learning outcomes.

Crime and Punishment: How Historical Narratives Affect the Evaluation of Restorative and Retributive Justice

This article explores how historical narratives affect the evaluation of political decisions regarding justice during peace negotiations. Specifically, this study evaluates how different narratives of the Colombian armed conflict relate to the preference for either restorative or retributive justice. Results revealed that a historically accurate narrative that included structural elements correlated with the preference for restorative justice, whereas a schematic narrative that focused on individual greed favoured the preference for retributive justice. These results are explained in terms of the characteristics of expert historical narratives, which include structural elements, such as economic and institutional factors. The presence of these elements in the explanation of conflicts decreases the weight of individual decisions and, in this way, prevent ingroup attributional biases.

Assessing multiple dimensions of distributional justice: Access, biodiversity and landscape structure of green spaces for multiple social groups of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile

It is broadly recognized the value of green spaces to human well-being and health, hence several cities are taken actions for improving their existence in urban areas. However, it is also recognized that the distribution of those green spaces is not reaching all communities evenly. Several studies on distributional justice have assess. the disparities on the distribution of green spaces worldwide but they tend to focus on. the quantity or the accessibility from residences to green spaces. We proposed to. assess distributional justice as a multidimensional indicator that incorporates size, quantity, quality, access to biodiversity and distance traveled towards visiting a green. space to enrichen our evaluation of distributional justice and disclose disparities further. from green space availability. By using the Metropolitan Region of Santiago as a case. study we evaluated the distributional justice of green spaces by multiple social groups. based on a combination of surveyed, measured and collected spatially explicit data. Our results disclosed that low social status communities have access to green spaces. of smaller size, more dispersed, on lesser amounts and poorer on bird richness than. higher social status communities. Lower social status communities traveled more to. visit green spaces of higher quality and mostly move only one class up in the social. status. Our research showed larger complexities in distributional justice of green. spaces which should be evaluated and incorporated in decision making towards. greening.

Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.

Body-worn camera videos and public perceptions of police: an experiment on positive video exposure and community-police relations

ABSTRACT Objective Explore whether exposure to positive BWC videos – particularly, acts of heroism – affects public perceptions of police while accounting for existing trust in police. Method An online vignette-style experiment was conducted in which participants’ (N = 407; age = 41.94 [s = 12.74]; 51% women, 80% White) existing trust in police was measured before random assignment to either view a short series of positive BWC videos or not. All participants then read a vignette describing a traffic stop. Participants reported their perceptions of procedural and distributive justice as well as perceptions of police more generally. Results Participants with higher existing trust in police reported more positive evaluations across all outcomes measured. Exposure to positive BWC videos only increased reported willingness to cooperate with police. However, trust in police and exposure to BWC videos produced an interaction effect: when participants’ existing trust in police was low, viewing positive BWC videos improved evaluations of officer respect and procedural justice as well as willingness to cooperate with police. Participants with low trust in police who viewed the positive videos became more similar to participants with high existing trust in police. Conclusion The findings indicate that exposure to positive BWC videos can moderate the negative effect of low trust in police. In an applied sense, the results suggest that police-community relations may be enhanced by circulating videos that depict acts of police heroism when such events have occurred and are captured on film.

A quantitative evaluation of judicial justice in civil cases with Chinese free trade zone enterprises as the plaintiff

Justice is the primary criterion for evaluating the law. Chinese free trade zones aim to attract foreign investment and promote economic development efficiency, but their judicial reform goal still needs to be justice. Given the importance of balancing justice and efficiency, this study assesses whether the judiciary sacrifices justice for the sake of economic efficiency in civil cases with Chinese free trade zone enterprises acting as the plaintiff. By introducing commercial factors such as enterprise subject and legal resource characteristics into a theoretical model, this study develops a hierarchical regression model to investigate the judicial process in free trade zones. This study statistically analyzes data from judgments and enterprises' public information, quantitatively evaluating the realization of judicial justice. This study finds: First, plaintiffs’ violated rights and interests have been protected and compensated, that is, the judicial result has been just; Second, judicial practice in this field has the characteristics of neutrality, equality, participation, and openness and adheres to the principle of “the same case has the same judgment”, that is, the judicial procedure has been just. Accordingly, this study argues that judicial justice has not given way to economic efficiencies, such as attracting foreign investment, in cases with Chinese free trade zone enterprises as the plaintiff.

Justice Evaluation of the Income Distribution (JEID): Development and validation of a short scale for the subjective assessment of objective differences in earnings.

Justice evaluations are proposed to provide a link between the objective level of inequality and the consequences at the individual and societal level. Available instruments, however, focus on the subjective perception of inequality and income distributions. In light of findings that subjective perceptions of inequality and income levels can be biased and subject to method effects, we present the newly developed Justice Evaluation of the Income Distribution (JEID) Scale, which captures justice evaluations of the actual earnings distribution. JEID comprises five items that provide respondents with earnings information for five groups at different segments along the distribution of earnings in a given country. We provide a German-language and an English-language version of the scale. The German-language version was developed and validated based on three comprehensive heterogeneous quota samples from Germany; the translated English-language version was validated in one comprehensive heterogeneous quota sample from the UK. Using latent profile analysis and k-means clustering, we identified three typical response patterns, which we labeled "inequality averse," "bottom-inequality averse," and "status quo justification." JEID was found to be related to normative orientations in the sense that egalitarian views were associated with stronger injustice evaluations at the bottom and top ends of the earnings distribution. With a completion time of between 1.50 and 2.75 min, the JEID scale can be applied in any self-report survey in the social sciences to investigate the distribution, precursors, and consequences of individuals' subjective evaluations of objective differences in earnings.

Inclusiveness and Social Justice in Evaluation: A Transformative Evaluation Paradigm

Policy evaluators who are committed to eliminating social disparities face several difficulties aligning their principles with research methodologies presents. The transformative paradigm incorporates the understanding that ethical practice is inclusive in a culturally responsive manner with members of vulnerable and marginalized populations in ways that challenge the existing power structure. This paper looks into the relevance of the transformative paradigm in evaluating the Kenya National Cohesion and Integration Policy. More subtly, the paper focuses on two key threats to social cohesion and integration, as identified in the policy. These are the overconcentration of state powers on the executive arm of government; and the inequitable distribution of opportunities and public resources. The overconcentration of state power on the executive is a precursor to exploitation, exclusion, and the perpetuation of ethnic and regional inequality. Although the 2010 Constitution has clearly reshaped Kenya’s political landscape, the solution to reducing the stakes of political competition and political instability due to the over-concentration of executive power largely lies with individual politicians and informal institutions that complement, or compete with formal institutions. Instead of the existing ostensibly meritocratic system that benefits individuals connected to the appointing authority, a transformative framework would assist in monitoring whether public sector employment reflect the face of Kenya. The Kenya National Cohesion and Integration Policy, while important, should emphasise the role of Kenya’s informal institutions in peaceful nation united in their diversity. Although the policy stresses inclusivity in governance, important as it may be, there is the need for Kenya to also focus on economic and religious inclusivity. As a way of achieving inclusivity, the policy should seek to end the predictable five-year cycle of electoral violence and ethnic antagonism that has plagued Kenya for decades.

Inclusiveness and Social Justice in Evaluation: An Evaluability Assessment

Kenya is a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse society that has witnessed conflicts arising from this ethnic and cultural diversity. The country’s politics is tainted with ethnic sentiments and politically induced disharmony. This paper used evaluability assessment to determine whether two issues identified in the Kenyan Cohesion and Integration Policy as threats to building a unified nation are evaluable, feasible and of use to achieve the policy’s objectives. The feasibility study, better known as an evaluability assessment, confirms that these two issues can be evaluated and can help policymakers and practitioners to achieve the country’s dream of building one cohesive nation that is proud of its diversity. Based on the discussion in this paper, it is advised that Kenya uses the evaluability assessment to provide short-and long-term outcomes that might be examined to measure efficacy and save superfluous or poorly conceived full-scale evaluations. The evaluability assessment method could be used in other, well-established programs related to the Kenya National and Integration Policy with a variety of stakeholders to foster new thinking and the potential for more focused and effective evaluations, even though there may be variations between programs and it is still unclear how generalisable these results may be. The next step would be to continue with an evaluation based on the results of this evaluability assessment and to continue refining the logic model with input from the participants.

A market for diagnostic devices for extreme point-of-care testing: Are we ASSURED of an ethical outcome?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is leading a global effort to deliver improved diagnostic testing to people living in low-resource settings. A reliance on the healthcare technologies marketplace and industry, shapes many aspects of the WHO project, and in this situation normative guidance comes by way of the ASSURED criteria - Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and robust, Equipment-free, and Delivered. While generally improving access to diagnostics, I argue that the ASSURED approach to distributive justice - efficiency - and assessment of worth - productivity - may constrain efforts to deliver timely and accurate diagnosis in the developing world equitably by holding back new and innovative diagnostics and indirectly encouraging program and device design that may unfairly discriminate against certain groups. Even as we try to overcome the problem of global healthcare injustice, we may be entrenching disadvantage. I present my critique of ASSURED by 1) referencing Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of orders of worth to highlight the industrial and market foundations of the ASSURED guidelines; 2) comparing ASSURED with other normative guides that elevate the importance of civic responsibility in evaluations of distributive justice; 3) presenting a case study of the failed promise of microfluidic diagnostic devices. I conclude that a new approach to normative guidance is required to assess the value of developing world diagnostics, preferably, one that does not force global public goods into the marketplace.