Legal, mental health and psychosocial outcomes of the RePresent Games: a quasi-experimental study

Abstract

This study evaluated a pair of video games called the RePresent games that taught users how to represent themselves in civil court. A quasi-experimental study was conducted that compared 69 RePresent game users and 78 non-game users with civil legal issues across four U.S. states on legal, mental health and psychosocial outcomes over 3 months. The results revealed that RePresent game users reported greater legal knowledge, better mental health and higher quality of life than non-game users across time, and a greater rate of improvement in legal knowledge than non-game users over time. These findings suggest that gamifying education about legal procedures for the general public holds great potential in helping individuals obtain self-help legal assistance although some formal mental health treatment may be needed for many seeking legal aid.

Key words:

• civil law
• legal aid
• mental health
• therapeutic jurisprudence
• video games

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Stateside Legal Services of Connecticut, the NuLawLab and the Game Design Studio at Northeastern University School of Law, MassLegalHelp.org, New Hampshire Legal Aid, New Haven Legal Assistance and Pine Tree Legal Assistance.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Jack Tsai has declared no conflicts of interest

Minda Huang has declared no conflicts of interest

Kathleen Daniels has declared no conflicts of interest

Casper Harteveld has declared no conflicts of interest

Dan Jackson has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional review board at Yale University School of Medicine as protocol no. 2000022410 and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by the Legal Services Corporation.