But as we start a New Year, soon a new decade, let’s dare to be a bit adventurous.

What if a vast range of mediation skills and techniques could be radically improved by new data derived from large-scale national and international field research?

What if mediation field research could happen in a coordinated manner, maintaining a critical level of universal definitions that allows comparison of findings, thus avoiding duplication of effort and cost, accelerating the generation of a truly credible global body of “mediation science”, overcoming the management and cost considerations that currently spook this prospect?

What if data from synchronized field research really could be made freely available online to assist mediators select the processes and tools that would be most likely to benefit a wide range of circumstances – instead of having to rely only on a haphazard combination of training, instinct, experience, experimentation and habit?

What if, to give one example of potentially hundreds, field research in a particular situation could determine the statistical probability of a certain style of mediation, or a particular hybrid process, being more or less likely to meet the needs of the parties? Or, to give another example, what if field research could establish the most likely successful approach, process or questioning sequence where the parties have different cultural backgrounds?

What if field research could establish the optimal time to mediate in certain situations?

What if the financial value of a conventional mediation, or a hybrid process like Arb-Med-Arb, or other things that are known or assumed to be significant but still remain largely unproven, could be credibly established by fieldwork data?

What if the costs of large-scale coordinated field research could be funded by grant-giving institutions, governments and the prime beneficiaries of such research who would be motivated to allow the presence of researchers to observe mediations?

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