Improving Juror Comprehension of Forensic Testimony and Its Effects on Decision-Making and Evidence Evaluation, United States, 2020

Forensic science plays a vital role in the prosecution of criminal matters. Jurors, however, struggle with understanding both the science and statistics that underlie such testimony. Prior research on the effectiveness of jury instructions in training jurors to understand science and scientific testimony has been split, with some studies finding a beneficial effect, some finding no effect, and some finding that they cause jurors to be skeptical even of high-quality testimony. Here, investigators sought to empirically test the effectiveness of an instructional video at improving jurors' ability to detect low-quality forensic testimony. For the purposes of this study, testimony quality was defined based on the Department of Justice's Uniform Language for Testimony and Reports (DOJ ULTR).

The Gender Effects Paper Study Data made available through ICPSR includes data from the Main Study and a second pilot study conducted by researchers. These data were compiled to examine the impact of a forensic expert's gender on jurors' assessments of the quality of the expert's testimony.

There are two additional datasets associated with this study:

Main Study:
Dataset contains survey results from a sample of 509 jury-eligible U.S adults who participated in the Main Study.
Pilot Study:
Dataset contains survey results from a sample of 229 jury-eligible university undergraduates who completed the Pilot Study.