RESEARCH
Introduction
Once the tournament you’re going to has released its docket of legislation, and you need to start writing your speeches. Maybe you know what points you’re going to use, maybe you don’t. Either way, research is an important step toward understanding and quantifying your claims.
Simply, the act of researching is gathering information from a variety of sources to come up with potential arguments or to use when delivering those arguments. The research itself is the source and its information in regard to your topic. Every speech in congressional debate should have research at some point, almost always in multiple places depending on the type of speech you want to give.
Early Background Research
The goal of background research is to develop a nuanced understanding of all the terms, concepts, and actors involved in a debate, in addition to the common arguments you should expect. Ultimately, there are 3 things you need to do when beginning background research.
Define terms you don’t know
Learn about countries, organizations, or actors that are involved
Understand the problem that the bill is trying to solve, and how it wants to solve it
First, defining terms. This is often easy and can sometimes be skipped entirely since most ambiguous terms are usually defined in Section 2 of the legislation itself. However, if a word is used that you don’t entirely understand, it’s still worth a quick Google search to find what it means. Even if you don’t plan on using the term in your speech, it’s still useful to understand its meaning because it helps you refute and question without missing context. Merriam-Webster tends to be a good place to find the meaning of words that aren’t legally defined.
If you do plan on using the term in your speech, it might be worth looking into the legal definition to set a clear burden in your speech that you hopefully prove. However, this is uncommon and not recommended in the vast majority of legislative debates.
Second, learn about countries and organizations involved in the bill or resolution. Generally speaking, it’s important to know that North Korea is a dictatorship run by Kim Jong Un and has nuclear capabilities if you’re debating anything regarding the Korean peninsula. Or in a debate about Ukraine, it’s important to know that they’re at war with Russia. These are pretty obvious examples, but it’s always important to check up on the countries involved. A new development in China’s aggression toward Taiwan may not be mainstream news, but it is important to a debate in the region. And any debate about Africa usually involves countries that the average person doesn’t fully understand.
And while resolutions may focus on a country, bills are also important. Section 3 gives enforcement power to a specific governmental agency, which should also be understood. Debates about immigration can often focus exclusively on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). That may not be the point you want to give, especially when it comes to a lot of other less controversial agencies, but it should still be researched to anticipate potential refutations and questions.
A simple “EPA good” and “EPA bad” usually suffices for a Google search in this regard, although you may go down a rabbit hole of information if that’s the direction you want to take your speech. The same can be said for foreign countries, such as “Algeria good” and “Algeria bad.” I also recommend “Algeria corruption” when talking about foreign nations you know nothing about. If you have some solid background information already, look for recent developments and move on to your next step.
Speaking of that next step, it’s important to understand the problem that the bill is trying to solve, and how it wants to solve it. Usually, these are relatively identifiable within the bill itself, but sometimes they require some knowledge to understand exactly what is going on. Some bills address multiple issues with a single solution, while others tackle the same problem with multiple solutions. Most of the time, however, bills are focused on one problem and one solution. While background research is often meant to be surface-level, understanding the problem that caused the legislation is often an area you may want to go more in-depth since you can use many of those same studies as legitimate sources in your speech explaining the status quo.
Extensive Background Research
Now that you understand the bill at a basic level, we’re nearly ready to start with the actual research. Just one more thing, or eight I guess.
Who enforces the bill?
Who are the main people the bill will affect?
What does the bill do?
What similar policies have been tried in real life?
What problem is the bill trying to solve?
What real-world events triggered this bill to be written?
What events on the news are affecting the actors involved in this bill?
What are the common arguments for or against this policy?
This seems like a lot, but it’s not that bad. Question #1 is answered in Section 3 of the bill (and furthered with your prior searches of “agency good” and “agency bad”). Question #3 is the entire basis of Section 1 of the legislation, and Questions #6 and #7 is the “whereas” clauses of a resolution. Overall, questions 1-7 are all surface level, where the answer is either intuitive or answered in the bill itself. If you want to go in-depth, you can, but you don’t need to and time is better spent elsewhere.
The important question is #8, what are the common arguments on either side of this legislation? If it’s a real policy proposal, there’s usually a New York Times or Washington Post article outlining these pros and cons.
The goal isn’t to create the best arguments on either side, only the most common. This is important because it means you can write a refutation into your speech before anyone has ever spoken in the round, anticipating their arguments rather than reacting to them.
Finding Sources
At this point, you should have come up with the argument(s) that you are going to use in your speech, as well as the warrants, and maybe even the impacts for them. All you have to do is find credible sources that back you up. How do you go about finding that? In its simplest form, google. There’s never going to be something brought up in a congressional debate speech that cannot be found on Google, and you can find just about anything there with a credible enough citation to prove your point. Beyond that, there are a few tools at your disposal that make finding sources even easier.
First, Google Scholar. It’s essentially Google's compilation of large studies on just about any topic you could think of, all compiled in a single search engine. You can filter publication dates and relevance to find your most important information.
Second is Harvard University’s Think Tank Search. It’s similar to Google Scholar but run by Harvard University filtering massive US-based and foreign think tanks to come up with the best information and sources for your every research need.
But once you’ve found your perfect study, there’s probably a few problems. One, the PDFs are 100s of pages long ... you can’t read all that!! The simple solution is to only look for what you need. Use CNTL+F to search for specific terms, and more usefully, “percent,” “%,” or “per cent” depending on the study. “Dollar” and “$” also work when needed.
Check out this master list of sources.
The other major problem is paywalls. Most studies cost a lot of money and they don’t want to just give away the content for free. Oftentimes, the abstract section is available for free, while the rest is pay-to-see. Again, there are a few tools available. Sci-hub.se is run by Russian hackers, where you can paste the paywalled URL and obtain a freely available PDF, no more paywall. Archive is another great paywall-bypassing website for use.
Ultimately, there are 3 key things you want in your source. First, great credibility, usually from a University of Policy think tank. I’ll get more into this in the “Evidence Ethics” section of this resource.
The second is quantification. Without numbers, you could have just as easily used logic to prove the same point and it would have likely made more sense. When numbers are on your side, you can use them to say that your side has larger impacts on any number of different scales with much more accuracy than you could otherwise. Better yet, it can help extend points and make you look even better than competitors who couldn’t give the same numbers you did.
Lastly, evidence can be useful when proving something everybody has thus far assumed. Either disproving or proving it makes you stand out from the crowd, and helps you become an even better debater in the eyes of the judges.
Evidence Ethics
I’ve talked a little bit about using credible sources. But what exactly makes a source credible? No Wikipedia, no CNN, Fox News, or any other deeply partisan source for that matter. But in congressional debate, it’s a little bit more than that. Blogs are essentially off-limits (with the possible exception if it’s written by an esteemed professional at a prestigious university, but that’s extremely rare), and even credible news sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post are usually not the best option (although they’re definitely still good enough to use if you have to).
Instead, you should focus on University studies whenever possible. META Analyses, or compilations of dozens or even hundreds of studies by massive think tanks can be used to single-handedly refute an argument. Anything ending in “Institute” or “Foundation” is great the vast majority of the time. Any governmental organization or agency is up there when it comes to credibility, especially if it’s the same one that’s enforcing the legislation.
Lastly, with evidence ethics is the publication date. Conventionally, anything more than 5 years old should be avoided if at all possible. A study within the past year is exceptional, and anything in between is usable and accepted. Congressional debate prides itself on its high-evidence ethics, and most tournaments will disqualify you and even your entire team if you are found to be falsifying sources.
Creating Your Own Research
Another, mostly unused option of research is doing it yourself. As someone who’s done it firsthand, it’s a painful process, but can often be worth the results. Here’s an example of what it might look like. Essentially, you have to compile data from different sources together to quantify a certain statistic that is otherwise unobtainable. In the example I gave, it predicts Amazon’s CO2 emissions using two separate models -- one continuing their current upwards trend, and the other achieving a goal of carbon-neutral by 2040, which is Amazon’s goal. From there, a carbon tax (with specific dollar amounts specified by the legislation) is multiplied by the contrasting data to figure out how much money it would cost to maintain the status quo. Simply, the massive data that you can apply over a timeframe that you set for yourself means that incentives to follow a policy are furthered beyond what any other source would claim.
Again, I wouldn’t recommend this method for anyone, but if all else fails, put it in a spreadsheet and do the math yourself.
Citations
Lastly comes the issue of how to cite your sources. Ultimately, it’s up to you how extreme you want to be. Some judges love to hear extravagant citations to prove your point, while it can also be seen as a waste of time for others. But whichever way you choose, there are a few basic minimums.
First, the name of the source, such as “the New York Times” or “Harvard Law Review” should always be given. And second, the date of the publication. If it’s within 3 months, include the day. If it’s within 3 years, include the month. Any further out and the year alone is likely enough, although too far and you run the risk of irrelevant information in a modern, ever-changing world.
An example of a full citation might be “according to the Washington Post in January 2022,” or “a Georgetown University study quantified in 2019 that ...”
For me, I like to go in-depth wherever possible. I give a third part to the citation, being the author(s). If a study has more than one researcher, I state how many there were who worked on the project. For some debaters, they may even reference the qualifications of the author if there is only one.
Here’s what that might look like, “an April 2021 study by 3 researchers at the International Institute for Industrial and Environmental Economics found that ...” or “an award-winning study by Elaine Hyshka, the Vice Chair of Canadian Institutes of Health Research reported in 2017 that...”
Conclusion
Overall, research is a critical part of any congressional debate speech. And for novices, it’s often the most time consuming part as well. As you get more acquainted with the tools at your disposal and access to prior research, the process will go by faster and allow for more perfection of speechwriting, delivery, and round integration. But without quality research, it becomes impossible to prove your points as a new debater on the circuit.