ASC Research

Research is a vital part of maintaining the vitality of our activity. As such, we encourage people to engage in research, including at the ASC Tournament. Below, you will find the procedure for requesting permission to conduct research at the ASC Tournament. 

A Note on Research at the ASC National Tournament

Julie and Ben Walker regarding the 2026 ASC Tournament

Research at national tournaments has been conducted for decades. Often, the speech round itself is considered a public space. Public spaces and communication that happens in public spaces is typically governed under the Common Rule. The Common Rule discusses (among other things) the regulation of informed consent for research participants).

Research protections for the rights of research subjects are an important part of conducting ethical research studies. Typically, explicit “opt in” as a part of the informed consent process is required for researchers to gather data from participants. That’s why when you start a research survey, you have a page where you agree to participate in the research.

The rules are slightly different when conducting observation of public behavior. According to the National Archives Code of Federal Regulations, researchers observing public behavior where “the investigator(s) do not participate in the activities being observed” are exempt from some of these procedures, given that additional protections are in place and the standard confidentiality practices.

Because speech and debate rounds are typically open for observers in a broad sense, the rounds would be considered public. That means researchers conducting observational research in a round would be engaging in public observation. As such, gathering data does not require the same level of informed consent as is present in other research spaces.

Asynchronous online tournaments present a unique situation for the public-ness of rounds. For preliminary rounds, competitors’ links are only available to the judges in the rounds (unless the tournament director toggles the software switch to make videos available to competitors in the round as well). However, for outrounds the video links are made available widely to those who sign an integrity pledge.

Some might argue, then, that the preliminary rounds would be private and the outrounds would be public in a sense. We contend that because all students perform with the hope of reaching outrounds that all students are then intending for their performances to be public (at least to some degree and with the protections of integrity pledge clauses). That said, we have had students request that their outround performance links not be made public, and we honor that request.

At the 2026 ASC Tournament, Julie and Ben intend to conduct research within the speech rounds by observing the performances of students and conducting content analysis on the structures of performances. Participation in the tournament, much like in past tournaments where widespread ballot analysis or performance analysis takes place, will constitute participation in the research. All confidentiality and anonymization precautions typical to research will be in place. Students who wish to opt out of the research should contact tournament staff, and multiple opportunities will be provided to students to opt out.