Today’s political climate has created an environment where simple words can unintentionally trigger polarized views and quick judgments. Watch Scott Allen, President at DOAR, discuss the importance of conducting jury research to develop case themes.

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By Natalie Gordon, M.A., DOAR analyst

Imagine that your football team makes it to the Superbowl, but only because a referee made a bad call in the previous game that determined who would advance to the championship (hint: Superbowl 2019). You might have conflicted feelings: Happiness about your team, but concerns about the ease of breaching the fairness of the whole system. These concerns are the subject of an area of research on procedural justice that has implications for the courtroom. The fairness of procedures, referred to...

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by Chad Lackey,  Ph.D., Director and Emma Shuck, Consultant

Employees still struggle with the decision to report harassment and discrimination despite legal protections and increased efforts by employers to make it easier and safer. Will I be blamed or face retaliation? Will it make a difference? Will employers even take my complaint seriously? With no easy answers to these questions, victims too often decide never to report their experiences. In 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) estimated as much as three-quarters of harassment in the workplace...

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By Natalie Gordon, M.A., DOAR analyst

What makes for an effective anecdote? In health research, good anecdotes are considered an exercise in generalization: “We have generalized from the data to the anecdote; we can generalize from the anecdote about the data and generalize to other contexts and populations.” Applying this to a trial setting, your party’s narrative or case theme might be viewed as the “data,” and the “other contexts and populations” might refer to your jurors and their own personal experiences. Thus, the anecdote...

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