Who Judges?
NEW YORK, N.Y. — Chad Henson and Paul Dorasil present a new column, “Debate by the Numbers,” which uses the tools of empirical analysis and empirical studies from other fields to inform our understanding of debate practice.
“With all the talk about how judging is done,” the authors pose in this first column, “very little has been said about who does the judging. At national tournaments with strikes and/or preferences, competitors get to largely select their own judges. Who do they select?”
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With all the talk about how judging is done very little has been said about who does the judging. At national tournaments with strikes and/or preferences, competitors get to largely select their own judges. Who do they select?
A judge’s regional affiliation is important because it may serve as a proxy for paradigmatic differences and political affiliations. To see which judges actually judged rounds at the LD TOC from 2004-2009, Parker and Henson associated each judge in each year with a primary state affiliation (e.g. Texas for Henson during the sample period, Illinois for Parker). Those states were then aggregated into six regions (Texoma, Southwest, California, Northwest, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast).
In order to determine which regions were “producers” of judging and which were “consumers” of judging, we doubled the total number of rounds judged by judges from a region, subtracted the number of rounds debated by competitors from the region, and divided it by the number of rounds judged by judges from the region. This yields the surplus (deficit) of judged rounds relative to the obligation incurred by that region’s debaters.
Texoma, California, the Northwest, and the Midwest are net producers of judging (with a surplus of 18%, 23%, 22%, and 12% respectively) while the Southwest, Northeast, and Southeast are net consumers of judging (with a judging deficit of 73%, 53%, and 13%, respectively). This is true despite Kentucky’s location near the intersection of the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest.
During this period, tournament-hired judges made a very small percentage of the pool. This disparity, then, is generated by the preferences/strikes of the competitors (changing the number of rounds judged by each judge present from a region) and the decisions of competitors regarding which judges to hire to fulfill coaching/judging obligations (changing the quantity of judges present from a region).
How can we account for some regions containing a judging surplus and others containing a judging deficit? Are debaters from consumer regions hiring judges from producer regions, or are judges from production regions more desirable to all competitors (e.g. because more judges from those regions are available or judges from those regions have some quality that makes them desirable)? What do you expect?
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“Debate by the Numbers” is a column written by C. Chad Henson (College of Law, University of Illinois & Head Debate Coach, Illinois Policy Debate at the University of Illinois) and Paul R. Dorasil (Department of Economics, University of Florida) that focuses on using the tools of empirical analysis and empirical studies from other fields to inform our understanding of debate practice.
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