The problem of ethics perplexes most who teach debate. Practices considered ethical by some debate teachers are considered unethical by others; occasional misunderstandings result from this difference of opinion. Controversy frequently occurs over what is right or wrong.

At the 1961 convention of the American Forensic Association, several members were designated to develop, distribute and collect a questionnaire to discover which practices are believed to be ethical, unethical, or questionable. This paper presents the results of this project.

While a consideration of debate ethics certainly is not unique, no attempt to synthesize the ideas of the nation's debate teachers on the subject seems to have been made. No listing of questionable and unethical practices which so many talk about can be found.

Perhaps three variables operate which make it difficult to identify or isolate questionable and unethical practices which would explain the absence of such a list. These are intent, degree, and the circumstances of each individual situation.

The intent of the debater must be known, some debate coaches feel, before a practice can be called unethical. If his intent is to deliberately deceive, lie, or cheat, he is unethical and, obviously should be penalized. But if he is simply ignorant of debate procedure or tournament rules, and his behavior has no implication of deceit, then his penalty, if there needs to be one, might be less severe. Unfortunately, separating the cheat from the ignorant in a debate may be a hopeless task, and both are apt to be treated alike. If such a separation could be made, ethical problems would occur less often.

Related to the variable of intent is that of degree, the relative number of times the practice occurs in a debate. A questionable practice occurring once may be overlooked. But the same practice occurring repeatedly may be termed unethical.

The circumstances which are present in any particular debate situation also condition the ethical judgment of a practice. Some practices could be ethical under one set of circumstances but unethical under another.

While these variables prevent absolute isolation and identification of ethical practices, the problem which faces the coach and the debater is to know what practices might be unethical or questionable in spite of the variables. Knowing that a practice could be questionable or unethical regardless of the variables may cause the coach or debater to avoid the practice entirely. This could contribute significantly to the improvement of ethics in modern debating.

The question, then, is, "what practices can be categorized in this manner?" This survey attempted, within the limitations of the variables, to isolate and identify certain practices which can occur in debate, and to discover coaches reactions to them.

Important to this survey was the compilation of a list of possible ethical, questionable, and unethical practices. The debate and public speaking literature on ethics, and written and oral interviews with ten coaches provided the material for such a list. This list became an exploratory questionnaire which seventy-six high school and college debaters and twenty high school and college coaches answered. The questionnaire was then refined on the basis of this pilot test.

Ambiguity of some of the items proved to be the major problem with the pilot questionnaire. A few items consequently were changed or dropped. The problem, however, could not be entirely eradicated. To make each item unambiguous meant qualifying each with sufficient examples to account for all the possible variables of circumstances, degree, and intent. After an attempt in this direction, the use of extended examples was found to be impractical.

Another problem discovered in the pilot test was that many respondents felt that some items had no relation to ethics. Whenever this opinion was overwhelming the item was omitted from the final survey. While some respondents mentioned this problem in comments on the final questionnaire, no item was considered by all respondents not to involve ethics.

The refined questionnaire consisted of the forty items noted in the results below. It required the respondent to decide whether each practice was (1) ethical and good debate procedure, (2) ethical but bad procedure, (3) questionable, or (4) unethical.

The questionnaire was sent to the 363 American Forensic Association members who were college teachers and were coaches of debate at one time in their teaching career, and to 195 high school teachers who were members of the National Forensic League. The results below indicate the attitudes of the 244 college respondents.

Percentages are rounded off to the nearest percent.

The purpose of this survey was to discover and identify practices which debate instructors consider to be ethical, questionable, or unethical. A few conclusions can be drawn from the results.

1. The variables of intent, degree, and circumstances make the isolation and identification of specific practices that are in themselves unethical very difficult.

2. Considerable disagreement exists among college debate teachers as to what is ethical or unethical, even on items that can be isolated and identified. On no item did complete agreement occur.

3. Sixteen practices covered by the questionnaire were considered by over half the respondents to be unethical or at best questionable. These were items 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15, 16, 18, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, and 33.

4. Fifteen practices covered by the questionnaire were considered by a significant minority of the respondents, at least twenty percent, to be unethical or at best questionable. These were items 7, 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37, and 39.

5. Respondents' reaction to item 34 is noteworthy since the ethics of debating both sides of a proposition has been controversial. Ninety three percent believe the practice is ethical, three percent questionable, and only four percent unethical.

The reader is cautioned not to consider the results of this questionnaire to be a code of ethics which all should follow. While these results may establish a base for future research and writing on this problem, and possibly the eventual development of a code which all can follow, they certainly do not represent such a code in themselves.

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