PrepTest 128, Section 2, Question 5
Human Resources Director: Some people dislike their jobs(54 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(5 more words not shown)
- Adetermine whether employees(15 more words not shown)
- Bmaintain accurate absenteeism(9 more words not shown)
- Cdraw any conclusions(11 more words not shown)
- Dassess the trustworthiness(13 more words not shown)
- Emake any reliable(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Showing up every day doesn't necessarily mean someone likes the job. My first thought might be that people attend because they need to pay the bills, but the director gives a different reason: some people think missing work would be ethically wrong. They attend out of duty despite disliking the work.
Now look at the other group. They enjoy their jobs, yet sometimes stay home because they sincerely believe they are too sick to work or might infect someone else. Their absences don't show a lack of enthusiasm for the job.
What we’re looking for
The two examples make attendance a poor shortcut for judging job satisfaction. Frequent attendance can coexist with dislike, and absence can coexist with enjoyment. To complete the argument, I want a conclusion about the difficulty of figuring out how employees feel about their jobs from attendance alone. Keep that conclusion tied to what these examples actually show.
Working the answers
- A
We aren't told whether either group fears losing its job. The stated reasons concern ethical duty, illness, and the risk of infection. Those examples don't establish how absenteeism relates to fear of being fired.
- B
Recording whether someone attended is different from interpreting why they attended. A company could keep perfectly accurate attendance records while being unable to tell from those records who likes the job. The examples make interpretation difficult, not recordkeeping.
- CCorrect
Both examples separate job satisfaction from attendance: dissatisfied employees may attend consistently, while satisfied employees may miss work for health reasons. That makes it difficult to infer an employee's satisfaction from the absenteeism record. Read C with the sentence's opening: it says drawing such conclusions is difficult, not that learning anything about satisfaction is impossible.
- D
The director says the employees genuinely believe they are too sick to work or might infect others. That doesn't raise a problem about dishonest excuses. We have evidence about sincere reasons for absence, not a basis for doubting employees' trustworthiness.
- E
'Any reliable predictions' about future behavior reaches far beyond the examples. A person's past attendance might help predict future attendance even if it reveals little about job satisfaction. The passage doesn't establish that attendance records are unreliable for every predictive purpose.
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