An examination of debater and judge perceptions in debate

This thesis is a descriptive study investigating the perceptions of 380 debaters and 95 judges at seven collegiate debate tournaments. The study examined debater/ judge agreement in terms of win/loss, speaker ratings and criteria important in the debate decision. A Kappa index and Pearson product-moment correlation were used to analyze the data.The findings indicated that debaters and judges do not tend to perceive the debate decision, speaker ratings or important criteria similarly.