Safeguarding Justice Research

What do people think is just? A basic element in justice research is the just reward –the observer’s idea about what is just for a particular rewardee. But discerning the just reward is not easy; much intervenes between the idea and its expression. Justice theory suggests four classes of measures, one direct and three indirect, each class encompassing several designs for data collection and data analysis. This paper examines direct designs and one of the three classes of indirect designs–that based on the justice evaluation–and revisits the longstanding challenge of justice-evaluation-based indirect designs, namely, to reduce or eliminate the correlation between the actual reward and the unobserved just reward. The paper presents statistical, algebraic, and empirical evidence to show how the factorial survey, with its layers of randomization, protects against bias, mitigating the correlation in the one-reward design and destroying it in the multiple-reward design. Of course, the search for better measures continues. As with length and weight, new theory and new technology will bring new and better measures of the just reward.