2024 Justice Gap Study Survey Data

Data & Reports California Justice Gap Study

The 2024 California Justice Gap: Understanding California’s Unmet Civil Legal Needs explores the state’s justice gap in 2024, describes the volume of civil legal needs faced by residents of California, assesses the extent to which they seek and receive help, and measures the size of the gap between their civil legal needs and the resources available to address these needs.

The programmed survey instrument, codebook, and data files from the 2024 California Justice Gap Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, are available for download.

Survey Methodology

Survey Instrument

Survey Codebook

Click here for more information about the structure of the data.

Respondent Level Data
Contains responses not specific to a named legal problem, including respondent demographics, perceptions of the civil legal system, and number of legal problems experienced. One record per respondent.

Household Level Data

Contains legal problem-related survey responses, including questions about each legal problem they and/or someone else in their household experienced in the past year. One record per respondent per legal problem (each respondent has a record for each of the legal problems in the survey).

Individual Level Data
Similar to the household level data but contains problems personally experienced by the respondent, as well as responses to questions about help-seeking. One record per respondent per personally experienced legal problem (with no records for problems not experienced).