The IDEA Global Debate Census is now getting underway. As the first ever attempt to quantify how many debaters there are in the world, and roughly where they’re based, the census is both historic and complex.

Broadly speaking debaters can be group into three categories; school, university and graduate. This misses some forms of debate which overlap between the three but it catches the overwhelming majority. I addition to that, there are those involved in debate professionally either as part or all of their jobs.

This census will start with the university level but will then use that information as a framework for identifying and cataloguing other debating activity. 

Over the next days, weeks and months all university societies can expect to receive a census form asking them for details of how many members they have, how many of those are active and some other information such as what debate format(s) and language(s) are used. Any university body that hasn’t received their form by the end of June, should contact census@idebate.org.uk or the Big IDEA at the usual email address.

The subsequent deadlines for schools and other bodies will be posted here and elsewhere later in the year. The information will be made available in numeric form at the completion of each stage of the process.