Some interesting hard statistics

Over at Practical Dispute Resolution there is a very interesting research exercise going on.

Early this month the blog authors announced that they had begun;

"... to study alternative dispute resolution by looking at mediation sessions the way a scientist would look at experimental trials. We are hoping to identify factors that correlate to settlement as well as factors that correlate to impasse..."

Since then the following posts have been offered;

1. Do Popular Mediators Have Higher Settlement Rates? Empirical Analysis of 578 Mediated Cases

2. Some Types of Cases May Be Better Suited to Mediation than Others

3. The “Natural” Settlement Rate and Court-Connected ADR

These posts share findings from a study of about 600 actual mediations conducted in a Superior Court in Georgia during a nine-month period in 2006-2007 and are a valuable contribution to the suprisingly few hard stats we seem to be able to collect in many areas of mediation endeavour.