3.2　The Cases

Out of all the 16 mediation cases recorded, seven cases occurred in a court’s mediation room, seven occurred at the residents’ committee (community office), and 2 occurred at the mediation center.Seven cases are from the county or village and the rest are from major cities.11 cases were mediated by non-judicial mediators and 5 cases are mediated by judges.About 8 cases have high or relatively high sound quality and are thus usable.5 cases have low sound quality and have limited usability.Three cases are not usable at all.Therefore, eight cases were abandoned during the transcription process.I interviewed 9 mediators and heads of street offices in total.During the interviews, I asked the same questions and write down their answers to each question.The interview process is not recorded because interviewees tend to be very sensitive about recording.One interviewee even took extra caution to pursue me after the interview to make sure that I would cover his names.In order to put the interviewees at ease, and to better ensure honest responses to the questions, the tape recorder was not turned on.(https://www.daowen.com)

The final data used in this study are 10 cases that have reasonably good sound quality.The following is a brief summary of each used case and mediation session.