Quality Control and Qualifications
Dispute resolution is still a
relatively new field, and it has predictable problems with quality and
consistency of approach. The documents reproduced here have been
instrumental in improving quality control, and in distinguishing different
dispute resolution objectives, in a number of organizations ranging from
local and national nonprofits to the U.S. Department of State. For example,
this way of looking at mediation is now being used on a worldwide scale as
the basis for determining what makes a
certification program credible for purposes of the
International Mediation Institute
(The Hague, Netherlands.) Chris Honeyman is serving as vice-chair of IMI's
Independent Standards Commission to help in the implementation.
Selection tests based on these
documents have previously been used in a variety of settings, beginning with
labor mediators in Wisconsin and court-connected mediators in the Boston
courts, and more recently extended to such large-scale systems as a
systemwide internal employee mediation program at United Airlines and the
mediator accreditation program of the Law Society of New South Wales,
Australia. Selection tests, however, are no longer the most common use of
this analysis of mediation skill. Variations on the resulting sets of
evaluation scales have been adapted for training and other purposes in many
and varied settings — e.g. in a State of Pennsylvania program handling
special education disputes, in the National Center for Mediation and
Conflict Resolution of the Israeli Ministry of Justice, and in a World
Bank-financed reform effort for the court system of Russia.
Croatian translation of an
evaluation scale from "On Evaluating Mediators," used in a 2002 training
course. (Click on image for larger view.) Courtesy of Jerry Barrett.
For program administrators and
scholars, the key report here (because it assessed the impact of most of the
others, and made adjustments) is the Methodology
described below. But if you are an attorney or business executive who just
needs to pick a mediator for one case, we recommend that you start with the
much simpler Consumer Guide. For the origins
of the train of thinking represented in all of these reports, please see
Five Elements of Mediation
and
On Evaluating
Mediators. And an update on setting
qualifications generally (as of 2001) is described in
Credentialing Approaches. The remaining publications on this page
describe a variety of uses of the underlying technology.
This 2004 Negotiation Journal
article by Chris Honeyman, Bee Chen Goh and Loretta Kelly compares
mediation in Chinese-Malaysian and Aboriginal Australian villages with
mediation in the US court system, and finds surprising similarities.
(Yes, really.) What's more, the similarities explain something that has
puzzled students of mediation for decades.
- Performance-Based Assessment: a
Methodology
The Test Design Project was
described by noted scholars as
- "a group of prominent
scholars and practitioners" (Editor's Note, Negotiation Journal,
October 1993), who attempted
- "an important and terribly
difficult task" (Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Professor of Law, UCLA)
with
- "a clarity and rigor of
thought which is all too rare in this area" (Robert Dingwall,
Professor of Social Studies, University of Nottingham, UK.)
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Overview (a
quick look, with links to three excerpts)
Full Text The Methodology was originally
published by the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, and is now
available without charge in PDF.
Background to the "Methodology"
The publication of Performance-Based
Assessment: A Methodology completed the 1990-95
Test Design Project, a national effort to improve competency testing
in dispute resolution. The Methodology
remains the most thorough available document on the technology of
quality control in mediation.
The Test Design Project was directed by Chris
Honeyman, who also drafted the Methodology and its predecessor document,
"Interim Guidelines for Selecting Mediators" (NIDR, 1993.)
- Finding and Hiring Quality Neutrals:
What Every Government Official Needs to Know
Overview (7k)
This publication features an in-depth examination
of many of the most difficult issues facing mediators and dispute
resolution program managers in federal agencies. With Chris Honeyman,
Charles Pou, Jr., and ten other contributors. Published 1996 by U.S. EPA
and seven other federal and state agencies. At approx. 70 pages, this
document is best viewed in printed form. A brief overview is followed by
the full publication in a printer-friendly format.
This short Honeyman
article is a follow-up on how the quest for quality looked four years
after the Test Design Project concluded. It appeared in CONSENSUS
(MIT Public Disputes Program), Winter 1999.
| "...In 1988 mediator Chris Honeyman
began the first effort to isolate the particular skills required for
effective mediation....Honeyman’s test was not designed as a
one-size-fits-all invention, but as a flexible instrument that programs
could modify to fit their particular needs."
from Waldman, E. (2001) "Credentialing
Approaches..." |
This short 2001 article by law
professor Ellen Waldman assesses the then "state of the art" of efforts
to guarantee quality of mediation services. It appeared in
Dispute Resolution Magazine, Fall 2001 (American Bar
Association, Section of Dispute Resolution; Vol. 8, No. 1) and is
reproduced here by permission.
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