Erin Persky, Associate AIA, CCHP
In the last article, I introduced the American Institute of Architects – Academy of Architecture for Justice (AIA-AAJ) Courthouse Post-Occupancy Toolkit, including data collection instruments and goals for Toolkit use. This article will expand on the importance of POE Toolkit data collection for the advancement of best practices in courthouse design.
Justice architecture professionals often lament the lack of research specific to justice environments. We look to workplace, healthcare, and non-justice civic research for evidence-based design strategies to apply to our projects (I’m a big fan of Charles T. Goodsell’s study of city council chambers around the country in his seminal book The Social Meaning of Civic Space: Studying Political Authority through Architecture – but it was written in 1988).
When Richard Wener’s book The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails was released, many of us clamored for our own copy to mark-up and study. We justice professionals crave research; we are committed to doing good, humane work. But, as one of my colleagues cleverly stated in a conference talk, the lack of justice-specific research to guide us forces us to work with our hands tied behind our backs.
With this in mind, the goals of the Courthouse POE Toolkit are two-fold:
- first, to assess the performance of a particular court building and provide feedback to its owners, occupants and/or designers – this is the most common purpose of a POE;
- second, the standardization of instruments provided in the Toolkit affords the opportunity to aggregate and compare findings from multiple POEs, allowing general conclusions to be drawn about what works and what does not work as well, and to tie outcomes, e.g. ratings, to specific design features. This level of analysis provides opportunities to develop and catalog evidence-based findings that would provide a most valuable resource for planning future courthouses and for developing performance-based design guidelines.
As previously mentioned, Toolkit users will be asked to agree in advance to share their data and findings. The results will be anonymous and aggregated, with no associated identifying information. Uploaded results will contribute to a database of information about courthouse design features to allow examination of the relationships between variables and outcomes. In this light, the Toolkit becomes more than post-occupancy evaluation – it becomes the basis from which courthouse best practices can be discovered and applied.
Over the next three articles in this series I will discuss specific features of the Toolkit and its associated field research process, share lessons learned from the Toolkit pilot study, offer advice to aid Toolkit users in gleaning as much information as possible from your POE, and provide other useful tips and tricks. The Courthouse POE Toolkit pilot study yielded useful lessons learned pertaining to Courthouse Employee Survey and Courthouse Visitor Survey data collection. Below are two excerpts directly from the POE Toolkit, which provide preparation and on-site recommendations for successfully recruiting courthouse employee and visitor survey participants.
Courthouse Employee Survey
Between a couple of days and a week before the start of the POE, employees should be sent an informational email about the survey and the POE and request their participation. Email content should emphasize the purpose of the survey (the design of the courthouse building), the window of time during which the survey will be accessible, who is conducting the survey, and its goals. The client can be helpful in crafting specifics of the email that may encourage participation or provide additional information pertinent to the staff at the particular courthouse under investigation. When the survey is distributed, the information from the introductory email should be repeated.
Confirmation with the court beforehand to which groups the employee survey will be sent is recommended, including which contractors and outside agencies utilizing space will receive the survey, the name of the point person for each agency, and who will forward the survey and send follow-up emails to occupants. Document this information in writing to the extent possible.
Follow-up emails should be sent every other day or another increment determined in advance. If the survey is open for five days, Monday through Friday (as was originally the case for Waterloo) follow-up messages can be sent Wednesday and Friday. The POE lead should be copied on all initial and follow-up emails sent to staff regarding the survey, if possible. This allows the POE leader to ensure that the emails are being sent at optimal times, to adjust the language of the emails if required, and provides a general knowledge of the progress of the POE.
At the end of each day that the POE Employee Survey is open, the POE leader should check the survey responses to monitor progress and check for issues that require immediate attention.
Courthouse Visitor Survey
The Visitor Survey should be administered in print, only. The ease with which the Court Employee Survey was distributed and submitted, and the time saved by not having to enter the data make it tempting to distribute the survey electronically. However, this is not recommended. First, visitors will have varying degrees of access comfort with computers and the Internet. As a result, selection bias is highly probable. Second, the presence of participant recruiters to answer questions may alleviate hesitation to complete the survey, as was the case during the courthouse POE pilot study.
It is important that two or more dedicated POE recruiters are present during visitor participant recruitment; three recruiters are recommended during high-traffic times, depending on the size of the courthouse. There are several reasons for this: first, to achieve acceptable randomization at least one recruiter must be handing out surveys to visitors in a location as close to the visitor entrance as possible to ensure that all or most visitors (depending on the recruitment strategy) are receiving the survey. If there is a table or similar hub, one recruiter must be at or close to it in order to monitor the area. (A hub of some sort is highly recommended.)
Second, visitors will frequently ask questions about the survey and, during busy times, one recruiter will have to collect completed surveys. Recruiters still must solicit courthouse visitors for survey participation during these times to achieve satisfactory randomization. Third, the presence two or more recruiters allows individual recruiters to take breaks without the need to shut down recruitment (and pack up materials, etc.).
Participant recruiters should also be trained in recruitment procedures, including randomization goals, selection bias, barriers to participation, and how to handle troublesome visitors and other unforeseen obstacles. A note on primacy effects: Survey recruiters should refrain from making value-oriented statements about the courthouse during visitor recruitment. A number of scenarios could place the recruiter in a position where this could occur, including comments or questions from the visitors or periodic observations from non-experienced recruiters.
Visitors recruited to complete surveys may be influenced by these statements, and these primacy effects can impact individuals’ responses on survey items. Even seemingly benign comments, such as, “This is a beautiful courthouse” or showing agreement or disagreement when a visitor makes a comment on the courthouse can have an impact on the individual being spoken to or those within close range.
If you would like to more information stay tuned for the next article, which will focus on data collection for the Building Conditions Survey and Interview. Of course, this information and much more will be available in the POE Toolkit. Publication of the Toolkit is expected in the first half of 2018.
(Have you visited the AAJ’s Justice Facilities Review database? If not, you can do so here.)
As always, questions can be directed to Erin Persky at erinpersky@gmail.com.
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Erin Persky is a justice facility planner based in San Diego, California.
(Return to the cover of the 2017 AAJ Journal Q4 issue)