Judicial Attitudes to Work Scale

The Judicial Attitudes to Work Scale (the JAWS Scale) is a 48-item scale measuring sources of stress and satisfaction in judicial work.  It invites participants to rate 48 aspects of judicial work according to how frequently they are (1) a source of stress and (2) a source of satisfaction.  The data enables courts to identify the matters affecting wellbeing within their judiciary, in order to guide decision-making about institutional responses and initiatives.

The JAWS Scale was developed by an interdisciplinary team of judicial wellbeing researchers in Australia as part of the Australian Research Council funded project,  'Judges' work, place and psychological health - a national view' (DP220100585).  The 48 items were identified and settled through a rigorous process of empirical research and judicial consultation.   Informed by the findings of earlier empirical research on the sources of stress and satisfaction in judicial work, conducted by Schrever et al. (2024), O’Sullivan et al. (2022), and Roach Anleu and Mack (2017), a list of over 60 candidate items for the scale were compiled.  These were then discussed and refined by committees of judges in every Australian state and territory in their capacity as members of Judicial Advisory Panels for the research project. 

Central to the design of the JAWS Scale is the principle that judicial wellbeing is not just the absence of judicial stress, but also the presence of judicial job satisfaction.  The systemic improvement of judicial wellbeing requires both the identification and management of sources of stress, and the identification and enhancement of the sources of satisfaction.  In addition, stress and satisfaction are not opposing or mutually exclusive experiences. It is possible for an aspect of judicial work to be both highly stressful and highly satisfying, which will likely have a less detrimental impact on judicial wellbeing than an aspect that is highly stressful but minimally satisfying.    The JAWS Scale enables a granular understanding of these dynamics in shaping judges’ occupational wellbeing.

Significantly, this scale has been tested in a large-scale national study of judicial wellbeing in Australia.  The JAWS Scale offers normative data for comparison and interpretations, and a methodically rigorous means of assessing the work and workplace factors driving judicial stress and wellbeing within courts.