LR Drill Set 5, Question 10
Sociologist: Of the 2,000 adults who responded to(56 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the sociologist's(12 more words not shown)
- Afails to consider(25 more words not shown)
- Bdraws a general(24 more words not shown)
- Cdraws a conclusion(26 more words not shown)
- Dfails to consider(29 more words not shown)
- Etakes for granted(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Who was home to answer the phone?
The researchers reached 2,000 adults at home, then used their answers to describe adults generally. But people who spend a lot of time at home are easier to reach there. People who spend their free time out doing things may be missing from the conversation precisely because they're out doing things.
Imagine calling during an evening when some adults are at restaurants, concerts, or friends' houses. The people available at home could be perfectly honest about their habits and still give us a distorted picture of the whole population. We don't need to assume anything about their ages or personalities. The way the survey reaches people already favors the behavior being measured.
What we’re looking for
So when 70 percent of respondents say they spend most of their free time at home, I believe that could describe these respondents. What I question is whether it describes most adults. The flaw answer should identify the leap from an unevenly selected group to the broader population. Having 2,000 responses doesn't fix a method that systematically misses a relevant kind of person.
Working the answers
- A
The two percentages needn't cover everyone or describe mutually exclusive groups. Someone could go out fewer than three times a week yet spend most free time away from home on those outings, for example. None of that defeats the stated finding that 70 percent of respondents report spending most free time at home. The real concern is whether those respondents represent adults generally, not whether the two descriptions exhaust every possible schedule.
- BCorrect
The population is adults generally; the sample is adults who answered researchers' calls at home. Selecting respondents through home calls makes people who are often home easier to include. That can make the sample unrepresentative on the very behavior we're studying. The general conclusion therefore needs more support than the responses of this particular group provide.
- C
We haven't established that 2,000 is too small to support any meaningful population conclusion. A sample doesn't have to include everyone to be useful. More importantly, increasing this sample to 20,000 would preserve the same problem if the additional respondents were still disproportionately people available at home. The selection method, not the number alone, creates the identified weakness.
- D
Another survey might get somewhat different results for many reasons, including ordinary differences among samples. The mere possibility of another result doesn't identify the defect in this survey's reasoning. We already have a specific reason to question its generalization: whom the calls are likely to reach.
- E
We can raise questions about the accuracy of survey answers, but the conclusion doesn't require every response to be accurate. Some errors could occur while the broad majority finding remained reliable. Even granting complete honesty, however, the selection problem would remain. E's claim that the argument takes all responses to be accurate overstates what it needs and misses the clearest flaw.
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