Dear Participant:

My name is Michelle Vered. I am an undergraduate student at Arizona State University under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Silverman in the Economics Department. You are invited to participate in a research project entitled: An Analysis of Bias in Competitive Academic Debate. This study has been approved by Arizona State University’s Institutional Review Board. The following study was developed to ask you a few questions regarding debaters and judges affiliated with your institution. Our goal is for this study to provide more concrete data on the overall demographic makeup of the debate community and serve as an indicator of potential trends that would disadvantage particular groups of students within the community. It is our hope that this information may benefit the debate community and assist you in your coaching and mentoring efforts with debaters. You must be 18 years or older to participate.

Participation in this research is completely voluntary. If you choose not to participate or to withdraw from the study at any time, there will be no penalty. The survey will take approximately 30 minutes to fill out. You may skip questions. As compensation for participating in the research study, you will be entered in a drawing to receive a 16GB iPad. There are no identified risks from participating in this research.

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, you may only disclose information about students competing for your institution that you have obtained through personal knowledge or observation, or have heard orally from others. This remains applicable even if educational records exist which contain that information. FERPA prohibits the improper disclosure of personally identifiable information derived from educational records.

The survey is confidential. Responses to the survey will only be reported in aggregated form. Results will be analyzed as part of my honors thesis. The data collected from this study will be kept in a secure and password protected storage location. To protect the privacy of students and coaches, once data collection is complete, names and school affiliations will be deleted and survey responses will be identified only by ID number. As an additional note about potential conflicts of interest, I no longer compete in college debate and the coaching staff of ASU will see data only in aggregate in the resulting thesis.

Further information regarding the research can be obtained from the project investigator, Dr. Daniel Silverman. He can be reached at Daniel.Silverman.1@asu.edu or (480) 965-4832. This thesis will be made available to interested respondents and debate community members. The thesis project has an expected completion date of November 2014. If you would like to know the results of this research, or have further questions for me, I can be reached at Michelle.Vered@asu.edu or (541) 520-2552.

If you have any questions about your rights as a subject/participant in this research, or if you feel you have been placed at risk, you can contact the Chair of the Human Subjects Institutional Review Board, through the ASU Office of Research Integrity and Assurance, at (480) 965-6788. Thank you for your consideration. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Clicking below indicates that you have read the description of the study above and that you agree to participate.