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Research is the bread and butter of debate. There is no doubt that contemporary policy debate, both in high school and college, is largely research driven. Our capacity to do research has a great deal to do with our capacity to participate in debates and to succeed in debate. Judges, coaches, and students have largely taken up the position that debate is an information processing activity in which we handle enormous amounts of information in …

…In order to avoid this problem, you should realistically assess how much time you need to read, copy, cut, sort, and brief all your evidence. Whatever you decide, build in a safety gap of extra time. Our general rule is that we split our research time 30/70, with 30% assigned to retrieving material from the library and 70% devoted to processing that material. Your split will depend on what type of research, reading, and processing skills you develop.