A study was conducted to (1) describe the male/female participation and success in regional and national forensic individual events tournament competition, and (2) identify areas of gender-based inequity from these data. Letters requesting 1984-85 tournament results were sent to 44 individual events tournament directors, of which 20 were…

Counterplans have become commonplace in intercollegiate debate, yet misconceptions abound. This article attempts to integrate thinking about counterplans with general debate theory. It reexamines the issue of topicality and sketches the basis for comparison of affirmative proposals with negative counterplans in the areas of presumption, inherency,…

To gain insight into whether debate judges actually do treat impromptu speaking as miniextemporaneous speaking, a study compared the comments judges wrote to extemporaneous speakers with those they wrote to impromptu speakers during the first two rounds of a forensic tournament. Approximately 1,000 comments from 152 ballots (102 impromptu and 50…

A study was conducted to describe male and female participation and success in both debate and individual events national competition and to identify areas of gender-based inequity. Data from three 1984 national tournaments (National Debate Tournament, American Forensic Association's National Individual Events Tournament, and the National Forensic…

A survey was conducted of students participating in the 1982 Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) tournament to uncover the reasons why they were competing in CEDA, whether they had ever participated in the National Debate Tournament (NDT), and which style of debate they preferred. Of the 133 respondents, 83 males and 50 females, 42%…

To determine the level of participation by females in Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) debate tournaments in the Northeast region of the United States, a study examined gender characteristics of participants in seven regional tournaments in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and in the New England…

A study was conducted to investigate the success of women contestants in Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) debate. The study sought to determine whether (1) CEDA is a more attractive debate activity for women, (2) men are more successful in CEDA debate than women, (3) the gender mix of debate teams favors all-male teams over all-female…