Internet Debate Research Rich Edwards, Baylor University August 2002InternetDebate Research Rich Edwards, Baylor University August 2002 Terms Internet Provider: The commercial service used to establish a connection to the Internet. Examples of a service provider are America Online, Sprint, ATT, MSN, Road Runner etc. Internet Browser: The software used to manipulate information on the Internet. The two major browsers in use are Netscape and Internet Explorer (the Microsoft product). Most educational institutions use Netscape, but the two products are really very similar. Both types of browsers will give you access to the same group of search engines, which is the main thing you will care about. Netscape has one feature that Internet Explorer lacks: it can report to you the last revision date of a Web page (select "Page Info" from the top "View" menu to access this function). I teach debaters that a Web page may be dated from the last revision date if no other date is shown on the page; Internet Explorer offers no way to know this date. If you really need to know this date and you are using Internet Explorer, one option is to utilize the search engine "HotBot" www.hotbot.com. HotBot is alone among the major search engines in its capability to report the last revision date for the Web sites it indexes. Internet Explorer has one very useful feature that Netscape lacks: the user can "copy" an image from the Internet (to move over to a PowerPoint presentation, for example) by simple right-clicking the desired image and coming down to the choice for "copy." It is easier to build a PowerPoint presentation using this feature. You can simply have PowerPoint running at the same time as Internet Explorer; copy an image using the method described above, click the bottom Start Menu bar to make PowerPoint the active window, then simply issue the "paste" command (either by Control-V or by selecting "paste" from the top menu choice for "Edit"). You can accomplish the same thing from Netscape, but it is more cumbersome. You have to right click the image and select the choice for "save this image" (there is no choice for "copy" in Netscape). Save the image to a place on your hard drive or on a floppy; then from the top "Insert" menu select "Insert Picture" (the choice for "insert picture from file"). The only problem is that this requires a couple of extra steps and you have to make sure you know where on your hard drive you saved the image. URL: This stands for Universal Resource Locator. It is the http://www.baylor.edu etc. Internet Search Engine: The software used to search for information on the Internet. You will use the same group of search engines, regardless of which browser (Netscape or Explorer) you may be using. Examples of search engines are Google, AllTheWeb, HotBot, Teoma, InfoSeek, Yahoo, Excite, LookSmart, and AltaVista. I have described the strengths and weaknesses of the various search engines in later paragraphs. My personal favorites are Google, HotBot, and AltaVista for policy debate research and Yahoo for Lincoln Douglas research. Metasearch Engines: These are Internet search engines which will submit your search to other search engines. The best of the metasearch engines are SearchOnLine, Dogpile, and Webcrawler. The metasearch engines advertise that they are superior to any one search engine since they will report results from four or five major Internet search engines. While this is useful for some purposes, it is not the best means to conduct debate research. The metasearch engine sends a simple search request to other search engines, meaning that you are foregoing the opportunity to use the "advanced search" function that almost all major search engines make available to you. This means that you often are losing the capability to do exact phrase searching, proximity searching, limitation by date, limitation by domain, or limitation by file type. It is also often true that you will receive fewer hits from each of the major search engines than if you were to issue the search directly within that search engine. Domain: Each web page on the Internet will have a closing three letter code such as ".com," ".edu," ".gov," ".net," etc. The domain tells you something about the origin of the web page. In most instances, the "edu" domain means the web page is housed in or provided by a college or university. The "gov" domain means the web page is maintained by a federal, state, or local government. The "com" and "net" domains usually mean a commercial enterprise. Most of the major search engines (in the advanced search options) allow the debater to limit a search to particular domains. PDF: This stands for "portable document file" and indicates that a document is being made available in a format which will look just like an original document in print (complete with page numbers). PDF files are designed to be viewed and/or printed in Adobe Acrobat Reader (available free for download from the Internet). The advantage for the debater is that information gathered from a PDF file can be cited at a particular page number (the same page number it would have as if you had access to the original printed document). Almost all congressional hearings (from the 105th and 106th Congresses) are available in PDF format. This not only means that you can download a hearing which will be identical to the printed one, but it also means that you have almost immediate access to a hearing once it has been held. PDF files also carry the advantage that they generally are made available from well-established sources on the Internet. Since the software needed to encode PDF documents is relatively expensive, it discourages less well-established Internet publishers from using the PDF format. Again, however, the software necessary to "read" PDF documents is available free on the Internet. You will know that a document for download is available in PDF format if the Internet URL ends in ".pdf". Most of the major search engines allow you to search for only those Web pages which make available a PDF download. HTML: This stands for "hypertext markup language" and is the code used for creating web pages. You don't really need to be an HTML programmer to be able to write a web page since numerous programs such as Netscape Composer and Microsoft FrontPage can create the code for you from simple-to-operate menu choices. If you want to view the HTML code used to construct a web page you can do so by selection the top menu choice for "View" (In either Netscape or Internet Explorer) and coming down to the choice for "Page Source." You will see displayed the native HTML code which creates the Web page. Maximizing the Use of the Search Engine Why use a search engine? This is the only way to find material on the Internet unless you already know the URL you are looking for. The problem is that you must know the URL precisely; close will not be good enough. In the early days of the Internet folks used to use printed resources such as Internet Yellow Pages. But now there are simply too many pages for these types of publications to be very useful. Google and AllTheWeb, for example, index more than two billion Internet pages. What should I look for in a good search engine? Comprehensiveness: For the debater, the most important consideration is to find an Internet search engine which indexes as much of the Internet as possible. Powerful search engines do this through two mean. First, they invite Web page creators to send a request to have their pages indexes. This is in the interest of Web designers since they almost always want their pages to be easily found. Second, they employ automatic searching programs which continually find new (and unindexed) pages on the Web and index them. The best search engines also do full text indexing. This means that you could literally pick a phrase out of the middle of a web page, enter the phrase in Google or AltaVista in quotation marks, and the search engine will find the page for you within about a second. This capability is especially important for the debater. You may have written down a portion of a quotation used against you that you would dearly like to find (either because you want to check its context or you want to locate the quotation to use in your own briefs). If the quotation is from an Internet source you can find it very quickly using a comprehensive search engine. Speed: Not a major criterion any more. In the early days of search engines you could sometimes issue a search and wait a long time (ten or twenty seconds) for the search to be completed. Those days are gone. All of the major search engines are really almost instantaneous now. If you are experiencing problems with speed it is probably due to your own modem's speed or to the limitations of your own computer processor's ability to handle the Web page graphics. Proximity searches: This is a big concern for the debater. If you enter terms like into your search engine, you will receive dramatically varying results depending upon the search engine you are using. Google does the best job of doing automatic proximity searching; meaning that it will order your search results by examining how close your search terms are in proximity to one another. Older or less capable search engines merely report the pages which contain some or all of these words. Google will also factor into your search listings the order in which you have entered the items; for example, if the "treatments" part of the search is the most important to you, you should list it first. AltaVista does not automatically do the proximity search for you but it gives you control over it (which is often a preferable approach). In the AltaVista advanced search engine, you can use the Boulean search box to use the "NEAR" term, which means that you want all cases where the first term is found within ten words of the second term. You could, for example enter the following search: <"alcohol abuse" NEAR treatment NEAR "mental health">. Most Internet search engines do not enable any type of proximity searching. Others attempt to match the power of Google's automatic approach, but with dramatically less satisfying results (Teoma, for example). Revision date reporting: Most of the major search engines allow the user to limit the search by entering a range for the last revision date (assuming you utilize the "advanced search" function). Only HotBot and Northern Light, though, report to you what this last revision date actually is. This is not an absolutely essential feature of a search engine (for example, I still say Google is the best though it lacks this feature). I teach debaters to use the last revision date as the citation date if the date is otherwise unavailable on the Web page. It should be remembered, however, that the Netscape browser makes it possible for you to determine this last revision date for any Web page you are viewing (unfortunately Internet Explorer lacks this useful feature). Exact phrase searching: This is an essential feature, for the debater, of a good search engine. By placing your phrase in quotation marks you can instruct the search engine to return only those pages containing the whole phrase as a phrase. When searching for "mental health services" you want to find the whole phrase of the resolution, not just pages which contain the individual words "mental," "health," and "services." Almost all major search engines allow for exact phrase searching but there are some unfortunate exceptions. Be aware, though, that unless you place your phrase in quotation marks you are not getting an exact phrase search. Image search: Not important for debate research but great for teachers looking for visual images to build PowerPoint presentations. Procedures for effective searching: What about capitalization? For the major Internet search engines capitalization no longer matters. Searching for "MENTAL HEALTH CARE" will produce the same results as "mental health care" or "Mental Health Care." What about quotation marks? Use quotation marks whenever you want the search engine to look for words together as a phrase (assuming you are using a search engine that enables exact phrase searching). If you search for mental health care (without the quotation marks), the search engine will look for web pages containing the word "mental," "health," and "care" but it will not require that the words be next to each other. By putting quotation marks around "mental health care" you are requesting only those pages containing the whole phrase. There is no need to put quotation marks around a single word. How can one limit a search to a particular domain? The best Internet search engines have an "advanced search" or "power search" capability. One of the options in the advanced search engine is the capability to limit by domain. Limited your search to the .gov domain will, for example, provide an efficient means of finding government publications on the desired search. How can one search for a particular URL (you know part but not all of the URL)? Many of the advanced search engines provide the capability to enter a search term and then to indicate whether you wish to make this search apply to "title only," "full-text," or URL. You would, of course, select the URL option. How does the search engine rank the web pages it reports? This is a somewhat controversial issue. Some search engines receive payment from Internet advertisers for the privilege of having their pages reported early in the search list. Most search engines, though, report the web pages in order of the greater number of occurrences of the term. Google ranks the items it reports based upon the proximity of the search terms to one another. Evaluating Search Engines AllTheWeb: Same as Fast. This search engine may actually be more powerful than Google for the number of Web pages it indexes. If you can't find something in Google, it is certainly worth a try to find it in AllTheWeb. AllTheWeb does not, however, have the proximity searching capability of Google; accordingly, it is less likely that the best web pages matching your search are going to be listed early among the search results. Finding thousands of pages which match your search is not necessarily a good thing unless you have the time to look through them all. www.alltheweb.com AltaVista: AltaVista used to be my "hands down" favorite for conducting debate research, both for policy and LD. The problem is that AltaVista has stayed the same (or in some cases has actually removed some useful services such as the reporting of the last revision date) while other search engines have become more powerful. There is still one feature that AltaVista makes available which causes it to stand alone among search engines: the availability of the "NEAR" term for conducting proximity searches. If you click AltaVista's advanced search engine, you will be given a "Boulean" search box. In that box you can type something like "mental health care" NEAR "alcohol abuse" - this tells AltaVista to find all web pages where the term "mental health care" is found within ten words of "alcohol abuse." www.altavista.com Dogpile: This is a metasearch engine which searches Overture, Fast, LookSmart, FindWhat, and About. The main problem is that it doesn't search the best search engines and it does not return the same number of items for each search engine as if you were searching that engine individually. www.dogpile.com Google: Best search engine overall for policy debate research. Other folks have discovered it as well: According to "The Search Engine Report" of May 13, 2002, Google is responsible for 47% of all search engine referrals worldwide. The next closest search engine is Yahoo at 21%, followed by MSN Search at 8% and AltaVista at 6%. What makes Google ("Go" "Ogle") so useful for debate research? Two factors: (1) It provides the most comprehensive search and (2) It does automatic proximity searching among the terms listed in the search box. Suppose, for example, you enter in the search box the following words: homelessness mental health services. Google will only return those web pages containing the listed search terms and (most importantly) it will list first those web pages which contain the search terms in the closest proximity to one another. Google also makes available a very capable image search database; this is very useful for classroom teachers interested in constructing PowerPoint presentations. www.google.com HotBot: This is a very capable search engine; for policy debate research, it is second only to Google. The factor which makes this search engine so attractive is that it is alone among major search engines in the practice of returning the last revision date of the web page in the search report. Seeing this date is very useful to the policy debater because it allows you to make judgments about whether the material is recent enough for your purpose before launching the web page itself. www.hotbot.com LookSmart: More a directory than a search engine. Not well oriented to conducting debate research. www.looksmart.com Lycos: Best map search engine on the Internet. Unfortunately, debate research doesn't require many maps. Not great for debate related searches because it will not allow the capability of forcing a whole phrase search. For example a search for the phrase "public health services for mental health care" returns more than a million sites. Looking at any one of the sites will disclose that it has returned sites which contain all of the seven words individually. Indexing is not very comprehensive. www.lycos.com Northern Light: Not recommended for typical debate research. The main problem is that this search engine is designed to locate for you text copies of articles for a fee. Scattered into a search result will be some free sites, but over 90% of returned sites will be sites which require payment before viewing. The fee charged typically ranges from a low of one dollar to the more common $2.95. They hope this will be the future of the Web; I hope they are wrong. www.northernlight.com Overture: Formerly GoTo. This is a good search engine but not especially useful for debate research. www.overture.com SearchOnLine: Of the metasearch engines, this one is my favorite for debate research. Metasearch engines simply submit your search to a variety of other search engines; what makes this the best of the metasearch engines is that it submits your search to the best search engines on the Web: Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN, and AllTheWeb. My main problem with metasearch engines for debate research is, however, that I lose the ability to use advanced search engine tools by using the rather blunt instrument of a metasearch. If I am using Google myself, I would prefer to use their advanced search engine which allows me to specify whether I want to search for an exact phrase, whether I want to limit the search to PDF (portable document files), whether I want to date limit the search, etc. When I use a metasearch engine, I lose all of this fine-tuning capability. Still, this is a fine metasearch engine. www.websearch.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://searchonline.info/ Teoma: This search engine has recently been launched with broad claims that it will make Google obsolete and that it has the most advanced search engine on the Web. I have not found it so. It is a very good search engine, but it lacks the comprehensiveness of Google and (more importantly) it lacks Google's powerful proximity-based method of determining the order of returning web pages. This means that the sites which are most likely to be of interest to you are not always returned early in the search results. Teoma does not allow truncation of search terms as does AltaVista or Google. Teoma also lacks the image search engine of Google, AltaVista, or AllTheWeb. Teoma is new and it may be improving to try to match the exaggerated claims made for it, but at present, it is not a match for Google's power. www.teoma.com Webcrawler: Webcrawler used to be a premier search engine for debate research because it enabled the "NEAR" term in searches (a powerful way to conduct proximity searches). Unfortunately, it no longer has this capability. Now Webcrawler is a "metasearch engine," meaning that it merely submits your search to a variety of other search engines (in this case AllTheWeb, AskJeeves, LookSmart, and FindWhat). I'm not a fan of metasearch engines for debate research because usually the debater wants to use the advanced search engine within whatever search engine is being used. When a metasearch engine is used, the search is submitted in rather simple form to numerous other search engines, failing to use the full potential of those other search engines. www.webcrawler.com Yahoo: Yahoo is a good search engine for policy debate research, but it is not as good as Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, or HotBot. For LD research, it is my search engine of choice. The reason is because it divides the material it indexes into directories. One of these directories is "philosophers." To call the philosophers database, simply insert "philosophers>" in front of your search term. An example of such a search follows: philosophers>John Locke. The advantage of using this directory search is that the quality of materials returned in the search will be much better overall and much more specifically related to the philosopher John Locke (as opposed to the hundreds of other individuals who later shared his name). www.yahoo.com Capabilities of Major Search Engines (Ranked in Order of Preference for Policy Debate Research)
Quality of Evidence on the Internet Setting rigid standards will be essential: The Internet makes available web pages from fourth grade students right alongside those from world-class experts. Just as in the print medium, one must make a distinction between the New York Times and the National Enquirer. Since most debate research is squad-based, meaning it is shared by many students, it is essential that there be agreement on minimum standards for the types of web pages which may be used for debate research.
Using the URL to sort out author qualifications: Consider the following example. You enter "John Locke" near "tabula rasa" in the top search box and "reason and unreason" in the bottom search box. You have a web page returned to you entitled "The Enlightenment." The web page contains some information which you find useful, but you have no information about the author. You notice from the URL that the web page comes from an "edu" domain associated with the U. of Arizona, but you don't know whether the author is a professor or an undergraduate student. The URL is www.u.arizona.edu/~scrane/enlight.html. Take apart the URL to discover more about the author. Click with your mouse up in the URL line and eliminate all of the end of the URL back to scrane, then return. See if you can find more information about the author. If the URL comes from an educational institution with which you are unfamiliar, eliminate all of the end of the URL back to the part which ends in "edu" then hit return. Through this procedure, you find that the author of the web page is Susan A. Crane, Professor of History at the University of Arizona, who earned her Ph.D. from the U. of Chicago in 1992. Probably a pretty good source. But some additional work was needed to determine the qualification. IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU FIND THE PERSON OR GROUP RESPONSIBLE FOR AUTHORING THE WEB PAGE. It is NEVER a sufficient qualification that you found it on the Internet. How to find the date. Some web pages will have the date prominently displayed at the top of the web page. Whenever you have this type of date listed, it should be used rather than the last revision date of the web page. Often, however, there is no date on the web page. In such cases, you can find the last revision date in one of two ways: (1) Use the "View" menu choice to select the "Page Info" option (available only in Netscape). (Resist the temptation to select "Source Info" because that will just show you the HTML code for the web page). Page Info will usually show you the name of the organization sponsoring the web page and the last revision date. Sometimes, though, the date comes up as unavailable. In such cases, use the second option. (2) Look at the last date listed in the index line for the web page from a search engine (such as HotBot) which reports the last revision date. How to prepare debate citations from the Internet. Example: Susan A. Crane (Professor, History, U. Arizona), Feb. 3, 1998, "The Enlightenment." Online. Internet. June 26, 2000. www.u.arizona.edu/~scrane/enlight.html This is the citation standard required by the National Forensic League, which follows the Style Manual of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Authors must be listed if present. Qualifications must be given. The date of the web page must be given. The name of the web page should be presented. At the end of the citation, indicate that it was gathered online and that the online source was the Internet (as opposed to Lexis/Nexis, Dialogue, etc.). The final date is the date that you accessed the Internet material. Carding Evidence ADVANTAGES OF ON-DISK EVIDENCE AND BRIEF PREPARATION Minimize Printing: In the age of the information explosion, it is simply not feasible for debaters to print out a hard copy of everything they think they might need to read. The two major impediments are expense and time. It is expensive (in laser printer cartridges) for a debate squad to print out all of the materials that active researchers need. It is also time consuming to print big chunks of material; computer labs typically have many computers but a single printer. The printer becomes the bottle neck. The overuse of printing is also environmentally irresponsible. Debaters chunk huge volumes of paper, often printing out a two-hundred page law review article in order to extract two or three cards. This means that hundreds of pages per day of printed or photocopied materials are simply discarded. More Usable Briefs: Word processed briefs are easier to read (no illegible hand-written tags, no red or blue ink which refuses to photocopy), and they contain much more evidence per page. This ends up saving a squad large amounts of money in photocopy cost. In fact, members of a large squad can simply distribute new positions via disk and have each squad member print out their briefs on their own printer. This dramatically reduces squad photocopy costs. If briefs are to be word processed, it simply makes sense to collect the evidence on-disk. Otherwise, the debater has to re-type the evidence which exists in hard copy. Sorting is Easy: The old way for debaters to construct arguments (a federalism disadvantage, for example) is to create piles on a table-top of evidence which is sorted into different parts of the argument. Inevitably, as the argument is being constructed, there are numerous times when the debater thinks, "I know I have that piece of evidence that says . . . but WHERE IS IT?" When evidence is collected, sorted, and filed on-disk, that doesn't happen. If the evidence isn't found in the right category, the debater simply uses the word processor's "find" function to search for the word or phrase. The card is located in seconds. When evidence is prepared on-disk, the debater can simply use the sorting function of the word processor to put the evidence in order. HOW DOES ONE CARD EVIDENCE ONLINE? Have Your Word Processor and Internet Browser Both Open at the Same Time: There was a time when computers simply didn't have enough RAM (current memory) to have two large programs open at once. Almost all current generation computers have plenty of memory to make this possible. Simply open the first program, then minimize the window (minimize button is in the top right corner) and start up the other program. If you are on a PC, switch back and forth between the two programs by clicking the desired program on the start-bar. On the Macintosh, you can switch between programs by using the icon in the top right hand corner of your screen. An alternative method for switching is to overlap the window just a bit so that a corner of both can be seen. When you desire to switch, just click with the mouse on the other window to make that program active. Steps for On-Disk Carding of Evidence: Text-Saving Method: This method is useful when debaters have only short periods of access to the Internet. 1. Locate the Internet site from which the evidence will come. 2. Construct the evidence citation on the word processor in accordance with NFL rules. 3. Identify the source in such a way that it will match the text you will save (i.e. Ravitch1). Once the Internet session is completed, save all of these citations to disk as "Sources." 4. Save a text copy of the Internet web site, giving it a name which will match the citation (i.e. Crane1) 5. The student would then follow the steps below on the Online Method, but because they now have a disk copy of the stuff from the Internet, they can finish the work on their home computer. Online Method: 1. Locate the Internet site from which the evidence will come. 2. Construct the evidence citation on the word processor in accordance with NFL rules. 3. Highlight the portion of the text from the web page which will makeup the text of the card. Copy the text into memory (on the PC, this is Cntrl-C; on the Macintosh it is Apple-C). 4. Switch to the word processor and paste in the text just below the evidence citation. (On the PC, this is Cntrl-V; on the Macintosh it is Apple-V) 5. Eliminate unwanted carrier returns in one of two ways: (a) click at the beginning of each line and backspace, or (b) use the word processor's search and replace function to eliminate all paragraph breaks. 6. Continue pasting cards into the word processor until you have taken all of the desired cards from the web page. Then copy and paste as many evidence citation tops as needed to match each of the cards. SORTING EVIDENCE ON THE COMPUTER Design a filing scheme which will allow addition of categories. Racism evidence could, for example, start with R. Consider the following example. HARM NOT SERIOUS No greater unmet mental health needs among minorities R100 Immigration is not a cause of mental illness R101 Minority groups don't seek help from psychiatrists R102 Incidence of mental disorders is the same across populations R103 Incidence of mental disorders lower among minorities R104 Suicide rates lower for minorities R105 ETHNIC MATCHING OF PSYCHIATRIST & PATIENT WILL NOT SOLVE Racial difference promotes tolerance and understanding R201 No evidence that racial minorities distrust white caregivers R202 No evidence that caregivers are racially insensitive R203 Stigma of seeking mental health care is lower among racial minorities R204 Studies claiming a need for ethnic matching are poorly designed R205 Mental disorders are identical across ethnicities R206 Doing research on racial difference will increase racism R207 Indigenous caregivers do not provide different types of care R208 PRESENT SYSTEM IS ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM NIH requires minority group representation. R301 NIH strives for diversity R302 DSM-IV is designed to prevent culturally inappropriate care R303 Prepare each card so that it is one (and only one) paragraph, including the evidence citation. This makes it so that the cards can be sorted into categories using the word processor's sort function (in Microsoft Word, the sort function is used by highlighting the portion to sort, then selecting "sort" from the "Table" menu.) Following are some examples of my on-disk cards: R100. Marian Barnes, (Prof., Social Work, U. Birmingham), TAKING OVER THE ASYLUM, 01, 81. The most comprehensive attempt to measure the incidence of mental distress among members of ethnic minority groups formed part of the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities. While this confirmed slightly higher rates of non-affective psychosis among African-Caribbeans, the difference was much smaller than indicated by the treatment statistics and indeed not statistically significant. R101. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 30. Although immigration can bring stress and subsequent psychological distress, research results do not suggest that immigration per se results in higher rates of mental disorders. R101. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 40. Scholars have debated whether low SES alone can explain cultural differences in health or health care utilization. Most scholars agree that poverty and socioeconomic status do play a strong role, but the question is whether they play an exclusive role. The answer to this question is "no." Evidence contained within this Supplement is clearly contrary to the simple assertion that lower SES by itself explains ethnic and racial disparities. An excellent example is presented in Chapter 6. Mexican American immigrants to the United States, although quite impoverished, enjoy excellent mental health. In this study, immigrants' culture was interpreted as protecting them against the impact of poverty. R102. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 54. Today, their levels of religious commitment are striking: Almost 85 percent of African Americans have described themselves as "fairly religious" or "very religious," and prayer is among their most common coping responses. Another preferred coping strategy is not to shrink from problems, but to confront them. Yet another successful coping strategy is the tradition of turning for aid to significant others in the community, especially family, friends, neighbors, voluntary associations, and religious figures. This strategy has evolved from the historical African American experience of having to rely on each other, often for their very survival. R103. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 27. This Supplement concludes, on the basis of smaller studies, that overall prevalence rates for mental disorders in the United States are similar across minority and majority populations. R103. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 42. Mental disorders are highly prevalent across all populations, regardless of race or ethnicity. Cultural and social factors contribute to the causation of mental illness, yet that contribution varies by disorder. Mental illness is considered the product of a complex interaction among biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors. The role of any one of these major factors can be stronger or weaker depending on the specific disorder. R103. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 42. Within the United States, overall rates of mental disorders for most minority groups are largely similar to those for whites. This general conclusion does not apply to vulnerable, high-need subgroups, who have higher rates and are often not captured in community surveys. overall rates of mental disorder for many smaller racial and ethnic groups, most notably American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are not sufficiently studied to permit definitive conclusions. R103. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 55. African Americans have shown an upward trend in educational attainment throughout the latter half of the 20th century. By 1997, there was no longer a gap in high school graduation rates between African Americans and whites. The number of African Americans enrolled in college in 1998 was 50 percent higher than the number enrolled a decade earlier. By 2000, 79 percent of African Americans age 25 and over had earned at least a high school diploma and 17 percent had attained a bachelor's or graduate degree. These rates are in comparison to 84% and 26%, respectively, for Americans overall. R103. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 58. The results from these major epidemiological surveys appear to converge on at least one point: The rates of mental illness among African Americans are similar to those of whites. R104. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 83. Today, the IHS remains the primary entity responsible for the mental health care of American Indians and Alaska Natives. Until 1965, the delivery of mental health services was sporadic. That year, the first Office of Mental Health was opened on the Navajo Reservation. It remained severely understaffed and underfunded until its dissolution in 1977. Legislation to authorize comprehensive mental health services for tribes has been enacted and amended several times, but Congress consistently failed to appropriate funds for such initiatives. Financial inadequacies have resulted in four IHS service areas without child or adolescent mental health professionals. Fragmented Federal, State, tribal, private foundation, and national nonprofit attempts to meet such obvious needs have led to isolation, difficult work conditions, cultural differences, and high turnover rates that dilute efforts to provide mental health services. R104. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 58. Evidence from the NCS, on the other hand, indicated that even without controlling for demographic and socioeconomic differences, African Americans living in the community had lower lifetime prevalence of mental illness than did white Americans living in the community. This difference existed for all of the disorders assessed. R105. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 61. Because most people who commit suicide have a mental disorder, suicide rates indicate potential need for mental health care. Official statistics indicate that whites are nearly twice as likely as African Americans to commit suicide. R105. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 138. According to national statistics, Latinos had a suicide rate of approximately 6 percent in 1997 compared to a rate of 13 percent for the white population. Overall, this lower rate suggests that Hispanic Americans are not demonstrating excess psychopathology through high rates of suicide. R201. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 192. Therapists and clients who match ethnically and culturally may relate well to one another and share experiences and perspectives. However, matches may not be conducive to transcending cultural biases and limitations. In mismatches, the advantage is that clients and therapists can learn about cultural diversity and confront conflicts. Problems can occur when cultural differences cannot be surmounted, and the capacity to communicate is limited. . . . Ethnicity is only one factor, embedded in many others, that shape therapy outcomes. . . . The meanings of ethnicity are more important to study than ethnicity itself, because they are more likely to influence therapy outcomes. (ellipses in original) R202. Arthur Whaley, (Prof., Social Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute), AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Apr. 01, 253. There is no direct evidence that African Americans with severe mental illness are distrustful of white clinicians. R203. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 191. No one knows how prevalent race effects are in therapy as it is actually practiced. Atkinson points out that analogue and survey studies attempting to assess counselor prejudice and stereotyping directly have generally failed to establish the existence of these traits. R204. James Walkup, (Prof., Institute for Health Care Policy, Rutgers U.), NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 1, 01, A14. A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health using data from the National Comorbidity Survey found that African-Americans with depression were more likely than whites with depression to say they would "definitely go" to seek mental health services, and that African-Americans with severe psychiatric disorders were less likely than whites with the same disorders to say they were "somewhat embarrassed if friends knew they sought care." R205. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 191. Comparative research has offered only partial support for the value of indigenous therapists, that is, workers similar to clients in background, lifestyle, and general personal and demographic characteristics. The only controlled evidence for the effectiveness of indigenous therapists has involved college students. R205. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 162. Only a handful of interventions to promote mental health, reduce risk, or enhance resiliency have been empirically validated for racial and ethnic minorities. R205. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 36. At the Federal level, efforts have begun to operationalize cultural competence for applied behavioral healthcare settings. Though these and many other models have been proposed, few if any have been subject to empirical test. No empirical data are yet available as to what the key ingredients of cultural competence are and what influence, if any, they have on clinical outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities. R206. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 60. Several studies have examined rates of depressive symptoms in older African Americans living in the community. Three of the more rigorous research efforts reported few differences in depressive symptoms between African Americans and whites. As with older whites, elevated symptoms of depression in African Americans have been related to health problems. R206. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 26. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, obsess obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and other disorders have similar and recognizable symptoms throughout the world. R206. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 26. The global consistency in symptoms and prevalence of these disorders, combined with results of family and molecular genetic studies, indicates that they have high heritability (genetic contribution to the variation of a disease in a population). In other words, it seems that culture and societal factors play a more subordinate role in causation of these disorders. R207. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 37. The concern about applying research regarding ethnically based differences in population frequencies of gene polymorphisms is that it will lead to stereotyping and racial profiling of individuals based on their physical appearance. For any individual, genetic variation in response to medications cannot be inferred from racial or ethnic group membership alone. R208. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 190. Substantial controversy exists regarding whether or not ethnic individuals are shortchanged by psychotherapy with a racially dissimilar therapist. Despite the strongly held opinions about the problems ethnic clients encounter in receiving effective services, empirical evidence has failed to consistently demonstrate differential outcomes for ethnic and White clients. R208. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 190. There are no experimental data to support the superiority of indigenous therapists. In fact, data from two analogue and attitude studies indicate that Mexican American clients perceive White professionals to be as trustworthy, understanding, and helpful as indigenous therapists. The comparative effectiveness of indigenous and professional helpers working with noncollege populations awaits further empirical documentation. R208. Catherine Hartl Chambliss, (Prof., Psychiatry, Ursinus College), PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED CARE, 00, 191. Archival documentation of differential treatment based on race or ethnicity is strong enough to warrant concern by the profession and continued monitoring by researchers; however, outcome research has failed to demonstrate that clients are better served by same-race or -ethnicity counselor-client pairings. The research in this area is so fraught with design limitations, however, particularly with respect to outcome criteria, that definitive conclusions are impossible. R301. National Advisory Mental Health Council Workgroup on Racial/Ethnic Diversity, AN INVESTMENT IN AMERICA'S FUTURE, 01, 20. The consistency of the evidence suggests that, historically, the empirical basis of our understanding of human behavior, its disorders and treatment, has largely excluded analysis of ethnic minorities. Since March 1994, NIH has required the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in research studies involving human subjects. Continued vigilance in implementing this requirement is expected to yield increased knowledge about racial/ethnic minority populations R302. National Advisory Mental Health Council Workgroup on Racial/Ethnic Diversity, AN INVESTMENT IN AMERICA'S FUTURE, 01, 38. The available data reveal a growing, diverse cadre of trainees and investigators who have received support from NIMH for either research training or career development. R303. Joseph Autry, III, (Acting Administrator, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), MENTAL HEALTH: CULTURE, RACE, AND ETHNICITY, 01, 161. The DSM-IV marked a new level of acknowledgment of the role of culture in shaping the symptoms and expression of mental disorders. The inclusion of a "Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes" and the "Outline for Cultural Formulation" for clinicians was a significant step forward in recognizing the impact of culture, race, and ethnicity on mental health. Once filed and sorted, your on-disk evidence file functions just like the "piles of cards" on the table. You use the index to see where the cards are which will support the part of the argument you are putting together, then use the search function on the word processor to find the cards, by searching for R301, for example. Read the cards which are filed there, and select the card or cards you want to insert in the brief. Then cut and paste them. Suggestions for Online Policy Debate Research Newspaper & Journal Articles: FindArticles: The Web's First Free Article Search. Their advertisement says that "FindArticles.com is a vast archive of published articles that you can search for free. Constantly updated, it contains articles dating back to 1998 from more than 300 magazines and journals." Among this 300 are numerous publications debaters should find useful: Mental Health Weekly, The Progressive, USA Today (The Magazine), Contemporary Review, Psychology Today, Adolescence, Journal of Social Issues, American Family Physician, Indian Life, Psychopharmacology Update, Health Services Research, Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, British Medical Journal. www.findarticles.com/cf_0/PI/index.jhtml Library of Congress Online Reading Room: From this Web site, the debater can find links to hundreds of online newspapers and journals. www.loc.gov/rr/news/lists.html News Paper Services Accessible on the Internet: This site provides links to daily and weekly newspapers and newsmagazines. www.mfginfo.com/htm/newspapers.htm The Write News: This site provides links to all major newspapers maintaining online services. writenews.com/newslinks/ Research Think Tanks: American Enterprise Institute: "The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom-limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense-through scholarly research, open debate, and publications. Founded in 1943 and located in Washington, D.C., AEI is one of America's largest and most respected think tanks." www.aei.org/library.htm Brookings Institution: "In its research, The Brookings Institution functions as an independent analyst and critic, committed to publishing its findings for the information of the public. In its conferences and activities, it serves as a bridge between scholarship and public policy, bringing new knowledge to the attention of decisionmakers and affording scholars a better insight into public policy issues. The Institution traces its beginnings to 1916 with the founding of the Institute for Government Research, the first private organization devoted to public policy issues at the national level. In 1922 and 1924, the Institute was joined by two supporting sister organizations, the Institute of Economics and the Robert Brookings Graduate School. In 1927, these three groups were consolidated into one institution, named in honor of Robert Somers Brookings (1850-1932), a St. Louis businessman whose leadership shaped the earlier organizations." www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/comm/policybriefs/archive.htm CATO Institute: "The Cato Institute was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane. It is a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato's Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Toward that goal, the Institute strives to achieve greater involvement of the intelligent, concerned lay public in questions of policy and the proper role of government." www.cato.org/pubs/pubs.html Heritage Foundation:"Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." www.heritage.org/library/ Hudson Institute: "In Hudson Institute's policy recommendations, articles, books, conferences, and contributions to the electronic media, we share optimism about the future and a willingness to question conventional wisdom. We demonstrate commitment to free markets and individual responsibility, confidence in the power of technology to assist progress, respect for the importance of culture and religion in human affairs, and determination to preserve America's national security." www.hudson.org/ RAND Corporation: "RAND (a contraction of the term research and development) is the first organization to be called a "think tank." We earned this distinction soon after we were created in 1946 by our original client, the U.S. Air Force (then the Army Air Forces). Some of our early work involved aircraft, rockets, and satellites. In the 1960s we even helped develop the technology you're using to view this web site. Today, RAND's work is exceptionally diverse. We now assist all branches of the U.S. military community, and we apply our expertise to social and international issues as well." www.rand.org/ Law Reviews: University Law Review Project: www.lawreview.org/ Yahoo Law Directory: This site provides links to hundreds of law reviews many of which make their archives available online. dir.yahoo.com/Government/Law/Journals/ LawWeb: Links to law reviews which make available their archives on the Web. lawweb.usc.edu/library/journals/journals.html Government Documents: Publications of the National Institute of Mental Health. www.nimh.nih.gov/ Publications of the U.S. Surgeon General. In 2001, several useful reports were released, including: Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General; Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General; Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General. www.surgeongeneral.gov/sgoffice.htm Publications of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). www.samhsa.gov/ Publications of the Center for Mental Health Services www.samhsa.gov/centers/cmhs/cmhs.html Congressional hearings: Hearings held in the past two years deal with subjects such as health insurance parity for mental health care, appropriate treatment for drug addiction, gambling disorders and numerous other topics related to the 2002-2003 resolution. Starting in the 106th Congress, almost all hearings are now downloadable in PDF format; this means that everyone pull up on their computer a paginated copy of the hearing just as if you had sent for a printed copy. Furthermore, the Web address listed below has a search engine which allows you to quickly find the hearings you need. www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong017.html Mental Health Care Interest Groups: Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law: Following is their advertisement: The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization based in Washington D.C. Known until 1993 as the Mental Health Law Project, our name today honors the federal appeals court judge whose landmark decisions pioneered the field of mental health law. Our advocacy is based on the principle that every individual is entitled to choice and dignity. For many people with mental disabilities, this means something as basic as having a decent place to live, supportive services and equality of opportunity." www.bazelon.org/ What You Need to Know About Mental Health Resources. Commercial site dedicated to mental health; provides many articles and links http:mentalhealth.about.com/?once=true& The Antipsychiatry Coalition. Following is their description of their activities: "The Antipsychiatry Coalition is a nonprofit volunteer group consisting of people who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry - and of our supporters. We created this website to warn you of the harm routinely inflicted on those who receive psychiatric 'treatment' and to promote the democratic ideal of liberty for all law-abiding people that has been abandoned in the U.S.A., Canada, and other supposedly democratic nations." www.antipsychiatry.org/ Thomas Szasz. The purpose of this site is to advance the debate about Thomas S. Szasz's basic ideas and their practical implications. www.szasz.com/ Suggestions for Online Lincoln Douglas Research Yahoo Philosophy Directory: Some web sites provide an index of major philosophers with quick ways of finding biographical and other types of information about them. One such useful web site is as follows: dir.yahoo.com/arts/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/ American Philosophical Association Online: Much of the this site is available only to APA members, but there is a public archive which includes APA Newsletters and some other publications. www.apa.udel.edu/apa/index.html Björn's Guide to Philosophy: This site is no longer updated, but the materials which remain available there are very useful. Under the "Philosophers" tab you can find a biography for major philosophers and a list of their major works. If an online copy of philosophers' works are available, you can move to a copy of those works with hyperlinks. www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/ EpistemeLinks.com: Maintains links to dozens of philosophy resources on the Internet. www.epistemelinks.com/Main/MainLink.asp eTexts Online: This site provides a reasonable large number of full-text copies of classic works in philosophy. www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/5883/philosophy/philosophy.html Giacobazzi's Philosophy Links: Lists philosophy links on the web subdivided into all of the major branches of philosophy. www.kirtland.cc.mi.us/honors/fgphil.htm Guide to Philosophy on the Internet: Operated by Peter Suber of the philosophy department at Earlham College. www.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: This is a one-stop-shop for finding the meaning of key terms in philosophy as well as a brief overview of the biography and teachings of major and minor philosophers. www.utm.edu/research/iep/ Internet Researcher: A Guide to Religious Studies and Philosophy Resources. libraries.cua.edu/irrelst.html Philosophy Sites on the Internet: This is a links page maintained by Tel-Aviv University Department of Philosophy. www.tau.ac.il/humanities/philos/links.htm Philosophy Subject Guide: This site is made available by the University of Central Lancashire. www.uclan.ac.uk/library/lib100.htm#electronic The Epistemology Research Guide: This page is maintained by Keith Korcz at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette Department of Philosophy. www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~kak7409/EpistemologicalResearch.htm The Radical Academy: Unlike what the name would suggest, this site provides information on a wide range of philosophical topics. It includes "The Classic Philosophers," "Glossary of Philosop |
