The national evaluation of the Neighborhood Justice Centers created by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1977 designed the research around the weighted goals defined by the programs' staff directors and decisionmakers in DOJ. The evaluation was well funded and focused on the programs' implementation and results and on perceptions of users and the public. An evaluation of the community dispute settlement projects in the Urban Crime Prevention Program sponsored by ACTION had limited resources and depended largely on programs' self-reports of activities and caseloads. The Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution is conducting naturalistic observations of the mediation process in a community dispute resolution center which includes elements of both community-based and justice-based projects. The research is trying to measure success as a function of client satisfaction, the quality of the agreement, and the stability of the resolution. A proposed framework for evaluation research design focuses on three subjects: implementation, impacts, and the link between analysis are the number of clients, the permanence of the agreements reached, breakdowns in agreements, time and delays, client satisfaction, quality of the results, and effects on court caseloads.