The Public Understanding of Law Survey
A Victoria-wide survey to understand how people see, understand and engage with the law.
Discover how people understand and engage with the law
The Public Understanding of Law Survey (PULS) is ground-breaking research to help us better understand legal capability, attitudes and experience of the law in the Victorian community.
The PULS is a large-scale face-to-face survey exploring how people understand, experience and navigate law and everyday life problems with a legal dimension (‘justiciable’ problems). It is made up of a predominantly face-to-face sample of 6,008 respondents across Victoria employing the best survey methods available to yield the highest quality data.
This report is the first of three volumes. It explores legal need in Victoria, how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them and how they progress and conclude.
The second volume of the PULS report provides an overview of levels of a range of different dimensions of legal capability across the Victorian population. It also explores the sociodemographic factors associated with different levels of legal capability.
The third volume of the PULS report draws upon the full PULS survey dataset to investigate more fully the drivers of problem resolving behaviour and problem outcomes, by incorporating the new legal capability measures into the statistical models of problem resolving behaviour and outcome reported in this volume.
Project publications
This summary looks at how PULS volume 3 demonstrates that legal capability matters and suggests new directions for reform to enable public legal assistance services to best meet people’s needs.
This summary looks at both the diversity of capability in the population and the range of problem types as identified in PULS Volume 2
This summary looks at key areas explored through the questionnaire in the survey and reveals some notable insights from PULS Vol 1.
People with physical and mental health issues fare badly at law. Responding to the evidence through effective policy and practices could make a significant difference to many people.
The third volume reports on the links between legal need and legal capability. It investigates the impact and implications of legal capability on legal problem experience and resolution.
Targeted and tailored engagement is necessary to increase awareness of young people's everyday justiciable problems and available legal help.
For young people, links between employment problems and mental health are particularly strong, with psychological distress a common consequence.
Psychological distress and mental illness have been shown to be among the factors most powerfully associated with problems arising in people’s lives that raise legal issues.
Single parents have been identified as being particularly vulnerable to experiencing multiple substantial legal problems.
Explore the knowledge, skills and attributes that are required to effectively understand and use the law.
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Explore how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them, and how they progress and conclude (if they conclude).
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This report is intended to act as a detailed record of the methodological approach used in delivering the PULS survey.
The full PULS questionnaire along with commentary on the questions.
Legal problems and health issues: insights from the PULS
People with physical and mental health issues fare badly at law. Responding to the evidence through effective policy and practices could make a significant difference to many people.