🔎 Research and Evidence

Start broad, then go deep

1. Get the background. An encyclopedia article, a government explainer, or a nonpartisan report (such as one from the Congressional Research Service or the Congressional Budget Office) gives you the basic facts and vocabulary.
2. Find the main voices on each side. Who are the researchers, organizations and officials who argue for and against? Read their strongest work, not their worst.
3. Go to the original. When an article cites a study, find the study. Read at least its summary, its methods and its limits.
4. Look for the data. Government agencies (the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Energy Information Administration) publish numbers both sides use.
5. Keep a research log: what you searched, what you found, and the full citation for each source.

Checking a source's quality

Researchers at Stanford found that professional fact-checkers judged websites better than many historians and students because they read laterally: instead of studying a site to decide whether to trust it, they quickly opened new tabs to see what others say about the site and its authors. Try it.

• Who wrote it, and are they qualified on this question? A physician on medicine, an economist on tariffs.
• Who published it? A peer-reviewed journal, a government agency, a newspaper, an advocacy group, a company? Each has its own strengths and its own reasons to lean.
• When? Is it recent enough for the question? (A 2009 study of smartphones is old.)
• What’s the evidence underneath? Data and methods you can see, or just assertions?
• Who paid for it? Funding doesn’t make a study wrong, but it’s part of judging it.
• Does it agree with other good sources? One surprising study is a reason to look further, not a final answer.

Sources: [2]

Advocacy sources are fine, if you label them

Think tanks and advocacy groups on every side publish useful research. Use it, but know where it comes from, and say so when it matters. A fair debater can say, “This comes from a group that supports the policy, but its numbers come from the Labor Department.” Reading the best sources on the other side is the fastest way to find the arguments you’ll face.

Quoting fairly

When you read a quotation, the author must agree that you’ve represented what they said. That means:

• Don’t cut words in a way that changes the author’s meaning (for example, dropping “not” or the “but” that follows).
• Don’t read a sentence where the author describes a view they then reject as if it were the author’s own view.
• If you add words for clarity, put them in [brackets].
• Have the full text available so the other side and the judge can check the context.

Sources: [1]

Citing

In a speech, say at least the author’s last name and the year, and give the author’s qualifications when they matter: “Dr. Lee, a pediatric sleep researcher at the University of Michigan, wrote in 2023…”. In writing, the National Speech & Debate Association asks for the full citation as far as the source provides it: author, date, title, publication, URL and access date for online sources, the author’s qualifications, and page numbers.

Sources: [1]

Cutting cards

In policy, Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum, debaters prepare quotations called cards. A card has three parts:

• Tag: your one-sentence summary of what the card proves, in your own words.
• Cite: the full citation.
• Text: a full paragraph or more from the source. You underline or highlight the parts you’ll read aloud; the rest stays on the card for context.

Evidence rules

Leagues take evidence honesty seriously. Under National Speech & Debate Association rules, a debater found to have distorted evidence (added or removed words in a way that changes the author’s meaning), read nonexistent evidence (a source they can’t produce, or that doesn’t say what they claimed), or clipped a card (claimed to read text they skipped) can lose the round. Other leagues have similar rules. Ask your coach for your league’s rules, and see Ethics and Sportsmanship.

Sources: [1]

When you can't read evidence

Parliamentary and World Schools debaters don’t read quoted cards in the round. They still research before the tournament, but in the round they explain facts and examples in their own words, and they win by reasoning. Practicing that helps every debater: you should be able to explain any card without reading it.