Those who visit Family Court next week might get a brief opportunity to play the role of judge.

They won't be allowed to decide custody or alimony issues, but on a select day they will be asked to answer a survey with 10 questions about court access.

"To really understand how you're performing and how you can improve, you need to reach out to your customers, and in our case, the customers are the public," Court Executive Officer Chuck Short said.

The survey is modeled after one that appears on the National Center for State Courts' Web site. Short said representatives from Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix have used a similar survey and shared their results at the fall meeting of the Urban Court Managers' Network in Las Vegas.

Short said Maricopa County court officials found the poll results beneficial, prompting Clark County District Court officials to give the questionnaire a try.

He and Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle presented a sample survey to the district judges over the past two months and received mixed reactions. Most of the judges' complaints focused on five "fairness" questions, which have been removed from the pilot survey that will be handed out in Family Court next week.

At a Family Court judges meeting in early December, Judge Cynthia "Dianne" Steel called the fairness section "way too subjective to be useful to anybody." One question in that section, which does not ask respondents to name the judge who presided over their case, asks court users to evaluate whether their case was handled fairly.

"If you lost, of course it wasn't," Steel said.

She later added, "This is Family Court. They're going to kill us in this section."

Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle, Kathy Hardcastle's ex-husband, said questions designed to measure the court as a service provider will provide helpful information. But as for the questions in the fairness section, he said, "This is just another attack on judicial independence."

"It strikes me that there could be no good use of those statistics," he said.

Judge Gloria Sanchez expressed concern about the phrasing of another question in the fairness section, which asks court users whether the judge listened to their side of the story before making a decision. Not everyone gets a chance to speak in court, Sanchez noted.

Nevada Supreme Court Justice Bill Maupin, who attended the meeting, urged the Family Court judges to consider the survey as an opportunity for them to showcase what they do.

"You shouldn't be afraid of your statistics," he said. "You should be proud of them."

Short also sought to reassure the judges, telling them, "You run a model Family Court."

Nevertheless, the fairness questions were removed from the poll. Kathy Hardcastle said the survey might be expanded in the future, when it will be handed out at the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas.

The chief judge said the survey results might show that perception does not meet reality.

"We need to see how we're being perceived and then evaluate whether that perception is accurate," she said.

Rebecca Monroe, who was at Family Court in early December for a hearing pertaining to the custody of her three children, said she would fill out a survey if she didn't have anything else to do.

"I know usually I'm here for like two or three hours before I get called," she said.

Kisha Earhart, a senior family services specialist with the Department of Family Services, said she thinks most court users will answer the questions.

"They're here for a long time," she said, echoing Monroe's sentiment. "You have to wait for hours to have your case called."

Earhart said the poll should allow respondents to note when their hearing was scheduled and how long they waited for it to be called. She said it also should ask them how many times they have had to appear in court to resolve their case.

Noreen Sharp, special deputy court administrator for the judicial branch in Maricopa County, said the first "access and fairness" survey in Phoenix was conducted in June 2005 at one of the seven Superior Court facilities. Since then, surveys have been distributed at all seven sites.

"This is one of the best projects we have going," Sharp said. "Our court loves this project."

Sharp said each of the polls has been limited to 10 questions, and each has included at least one question about judges' conduct. "The judges really cared about that," she said.

The most surprising finding of the surveys has been the public's high rating of the court, Sharp said. "Nobody expected this."

She said 93 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the judge had listened to their case, 95 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the judge had treated them with courtesy and respect, and 88 percent agreed or strongly agreed that their case was handled fairly.

Sharp said research shows that more than 66 percent of people will obey court orders if they believe the judge treated them with respect, listened to their case and lacked bias.

"That's why we're marking that issue," she said.

The Maricopa County questionnaires do not ask court users to identify the judge who handled their case.

"This is an institutional survey," Sharp said. "It is not an individual survey."

She also noted that questions about judges had a no-response rate of 45 percent.

"What we're learning is a bunch of people are here and they've never seen a judge," Sharp said. "They come for court papers. They come to file stuff. They come with their family member or friend as support persons with the one who is seeing a judge."

Officials have a Spanish version of the survey available, but Sharp said only a "minuscule" number of people have used it. She said many Spanish speakers come to court with somebody who speaks English.

In addition to the 10 access and fairness questions, the survey includes several demographic questions. Sharp said officials hope to use the demographic data they have collected to see how different ethnic, racial and socioeconomic groups are responding to the questions.

"We're not in it for the research," Sharp said. "We're in it for the really good sniff as to how we can serve the public best."

The latest version of the Phoenix questionnaire has no comment section, but Sharp said respondents still write in their remarks. One woman used the form to point out that a courthouse map on the popular MapQuest Web site was wrong.

"It could be something as little as that that's causing somebody to be late to court," Short said.

Court officials in Phoenix didn't know about the problem until the woman wrote about it on the questionnaire. Within a few days, they were able to get the map corrected. Sharp called that a big victory.

Anyone other than court employees, inmates or judges may fill out the survey. Sharp said the court has collected about 1,000 responses from law enforcement representatives, witnesses, defendants, support persons, jurors, lawyers and litigants.

She said the questions make judges and court employees think.

"By the very fact that we're counting behavior, people will modify behavior," she said.

Judges in Phoenix are accustomed to being evaluated. The state's constitution requires that every judge be evaluated every two years. During the evaluation period, which lasts four months, every person who visits a courtroom is asked to evaluate the judge, and the Arizona Supreme Court publishes the results before the election.

Although judges in Phoenix are appointed, every four years they run in uncontested elections in which voters may choose to retain or oust them.

In Clark County, elected judges are evaluated every two years by lawyers in a survey sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Clark County Bar Association.

Las Vegas attorney Romeo Perez said he favors the idea of asking the general public for additional feedback.

"The public pays for the facility and all of the staff, and I think their voice should be heard," he said during a recent visit to Family Court. "Not everybody gets to make it down to the County Commission meetings or the judges meetings."