Policy Debate Research Skills

Topic  |  Labs  |  Theory and Practicum  |  Research Skills  |  Technique  |  Electives  |  Files

Research time will be guided and the emphasis during lab time will be on group discussion and strategy development. Students will be grouped with similar experience levels for the lab group and with a diversity of experience levels for the negative group. The small institute setting will provide more opportunities for small groups of students to work closely with experienced faculty members. We will also emphasize depth in our research, rather than breadth, making sure that all students leave the institute with expertise on at least one affirmative case and multiple negative arguments. Being able to articulate a well-researched argument in a compelling way is more important than producing thousands of pages of evidence. We will produce a large amount of quality evidence, but our focus will be on understanding the evidence instead of simply producing it. 

“Cutting cards” means tracking down the pertinent articles, chapters and sections of articles, books, government documents, newspapers, reports, internet publications and any other published source to locate the best quotations covering a broad collection of issues. Debaters will learn how to use a large number of search engines and how to locate books and journal articles with efficiency. From there, faculty will assist students in reading the materials and extracting the best quotations, adding the full citation of the source and a caption to each of the quotations and then assembling those "cards" into an intricate set of blocks that can be indexed and duplicated. These files often run over one hundred pages and include quotations from dozens and dozens of sources.