RESEARCH REPORT: ADJUDICATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBINAL
| Volume 25 Number 3 | October 2000 |
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RESEARCH REPORT: ADJUDICATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBINAL
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In presenting last year’s paper, I reported the results of regression analyses which tested for statistically significant associations between certain case variables associated with case types, representation factors, the parties, and the adjudicator and hearing details as independent or causal variables and case outcomes as dependent variables. As previously noted, at least for personal grievances, of the variables in the data base, case type showed up as the most powerful predictor of win – lose outcomes. (It is noted, of course, that there is no measure of the substantive merits of the case in our database, so our analyses largely disregard the most important determinant of the outcome of a case). In any event, for the present report, similar regression analyses were run for just the misconduct dismissal cases.
A regression analysis is a statistical technique that can divide a sample (such as grievance outcomes) first according to the variable (occupation of grievant, whether represented by a lawyer or by a lay advocate, the length of the hearing, and so on) that is statistically most strongly associated with the outcomes. The analysis then goes on to separate each sub-sample created by that first division into still smaller sub-samples according to the variable that is statistically next most strongly associated with the outcomes in each subsample.
| Figure One is too large to display correctly in this window: click here to open a new browser window in which to view it. |
The process continues until all variables associated with the outcomes have been recognised. For the present report, the regression technique was applied to the sample of win – lose outcomes in unjustified dismissal personal grievance adjudications for the years 1992 – 1999, where the reason for dismissal was misconduct.
This regression analysis endorsed what was apparent from the frequencies. As is figuratively represented in Figure One, outcomes were statistically associated with year of decision. The statistical package found the years 1993 through 1996 to be sufficiently similar in win–lose outcomes for dismissal adjudication decisions involving dismissals for misconduct to be grouped together, but, as a group, sufficiently dissimilar as to be distinguished from 1992 and also from the period 1997 through 1999. In other words, there were three statistically distinguishable periods in terms of applicant success rates in dismissal for misconduct grievances, with the rate of success diminishing in each successive period. It is noteworthy in looking at Figure One, and consistent with the analysis in last year’s report, that there were further explanatory factors seemingly associated with outcomes in the middle period, 1993 through 1996. While there are, as again discussed in last year’s paper, many possible explanations for the apparent associations with those factors, it is at least a less complicated picture now that those influences are no longer apparent in the years beginning 1997.
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