ABSTRACT
The evaluation of community and neighbour mediation is still in its infancy, though the pace of development has quickened considerably over the last few years, especially in the UK. Some of the earliest evaluations carried out in the field of community mediation11 set out to examine the effectiveness of specific community mediation services. Richard Young’s evaluation of Sandwell Mediation Service12 in its early days is a good example of this type of programme effectiveness analysis. The study was based on a series of interviews with clients of the service, in which they were asked about their expectations, their degree of commitment towards the process as a method of resolving their dispute, and also their assessment of its effectiveness. No attempt was made to conduct any comparative impact assessment13 involving other ways of dealing with neighbour disputes; nor was cost-effectiveness an issue. Examples of this type of evaluation can also be found in other jurisdictions from around the same period.14
