PrepTest 146, Section 2, Question 20
Voting records regularly show that people over 65(29 more words not shown)
The argument's reasoning is questionable(4 more words not shown)
- Acompares an early(10 more words not shown)
- Bfails to take(9 more words not shown)
- Cprovides evidence for(9 more words not shown)
- Dconfuses the cause(7 more words not shown)
- Eoverlooks the possibility(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if people simply become more likely to vote as they get older?
Then today's older voters might have voted less when they were young, and today's young adults might vote more when they reach retirement age. We could see the reported difference without each new generation being more disconnected than the last. The author treats a difference between stages of life as a difference between generations.
What we’re looking for
To compare the generations more fairly, I'd want to know how each behaved at a similar age: today's young adults versus the older generation when it was young, for example. That wouldn't automatically settle every other difference, but it would address the obvious problem in this comparison. For the flaw question, I'd look for the failure to separate age from generation.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
We compare young adults in an early stage of life with people over 65 in a later stage. The difference could come from being young versus old rather than belonging to a more politically disconnected generation. A describes the unfair comparison that lets the author jump to the generational conclusion.
- B
The evidence uses percentages, not the total number of voters. A large generation could produce more voters in total while having a smaller percentage of its members vote. Simply knowing which generation has more people wouldn't fix the age-versus-generation problem.
- C
An argument doesn't have to explain every phenomenon it mentions. Here, the author does make an inference from the voting difference: later generations are more disconnected. The problem is that the evidence doesn't separate that interpretation from a possible effect of age. C doesn't identify the unsupported step.
- D
The author hasn't taken a proposed cause and mistaken it for its effect. The error is drawing a conclusion about generations from a comparison of age groups. We can suggest age as an alternative explanation without thereby showing that the original argument reversed a cause-and-effect relationship.
- E
The flaw doesn't require the pattern among age groups to change. Imagine that young adults remain less likely to vote than older adults, decade after decade. Individuals would move from the younger group into the older one, and their voting could increase as they age, while that overall pattern stayed the same. The author could still be wrong about each generation becoming more disconnected. A identifies the problem in the existing comparison; E instead asks whether the pattern itself might change later.
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