PrepTest 101, Section 2, Question 4
Because quitting smoking is very stressful and leads(81 more words not shown)
Each of the following, if(8 more words not shown)
- ARegular exercise prevents(2 more words not shown)
- BEach group in(8 more words not shown)
- CNonsmokers accustomed to(10 more words not shown)
- DAerobic exercise can(9 more words not shown)
- EOf those in(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Forty percent versus zero is a striking difference. The people who added exercise were having more success at the one-month mark than the people taking the quitting program alone. That gives the author a real reason to think exercise might help.
The proposed solution can be simple without being easy. “Replace smoking with exercise” is easy to say; actually doing it could still be difficult. Running a marathon has a simple instruction too—keep running—but that doesn't make the effort easy. We shouldn't read “simple” as a claim that quitting suddenly takes no work.
But what if quitting takes longer than a month? Some people taking the program alone might quit later. Stopping the study here could miss those successes. We can also ask whether the exercise group's early success lasts. The comparison is promising, but we want to know what happens over more time.
What we’re looking for
This is an EXCEPT question: four choices give some support, and one doesn't. We aren't looking for an answer that proves the recommendation. Even modest support counts, whether it makes the study more persuasive, shows a lasting benefit, or explains how exercise could help with the difficulties the passage identifies.
Working the answers
- A
At first this may look beside the point: aren't we trying to quit smoking, rather than prevent weight gain? Go back to the opening. Weight gain is one of the reasons the passage gives for quitting being difficult. Imagine someone quits, gains weight, dislikes the change, and goes back to smoking to avoid the weight gain. If exercise prevents the gain, it removes that reason to start smoking again. That supports the proposed approach, even though it doesn't establish that everyone who exercises will quit.
- B
Having four hundred people in each group makes the result more substantial than a comparison involving only a handful of people. Random selection also helps reduce concerns about a specially chosen sample. This doesn't settle every question about the study's design, but it gives some reason to take the reported difference seriously. That's enough to eliminate B on an EXCEPT question.
- CCorrect
These are people who don't smoke, and the change is that they stop exercising. Our argument concerns people trying to stop smoking who add exercise to their program. C tells us what happens to a different group under a different change. It supplies no reason to think adding exercise helps smokers quit.
- D
The passage identifies stress as another obstacle to quitting. If exercise reduces tension through the production of endorphins, that gives us a way exercise could help with that obstacle. We don't need it to eliminate every source of stress to provide some support.
- E
This addresses whether the exercise group’s early success lasts. At a year, 38 percent of the exercise group had not smoked, compared with 40 percent at the one-month mark. That is only two percentage points lower. The result therefore looks much more lasting than a brief early improvement. It supports the approach without promising that all participants will succeed.
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