PrepTest 148, Section 1, Question 23
Editorial: Teenagers tend to wake up around 8:00(74 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(12 more words not shown)
- ATeenagers start releasing(16 more words not shown)
- BSleepy teenagers are(16 more words not shown)
- CTeenagers who work(19 more words not shown)
- DMany of the(16 more words not shown)
- ECar accidents involving(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Letting teenagers sleep later could make their drive to school safer. But did more sleep cause Granville's decline in accidents? Maybe the later commute put them on the road after most adults had arrived at work, leaving fewer cars to collide with. That would still be a benefit of changing the start time, but it wouldn't show that extra sleep was the reason.
What we’re looking for
Or perhaps warmer weather arrived around the same time and more teenagers started biking instead of driving. Then the decline might have little to do with the school schedule at all. For the strengthen question, I'd want evidence that the change actually contributed to safer driving. Evidence supporting the proposed sleep explanation would help, but let's see what connection the choices support.
Working the answers
- A
We're already told when teenagers stop releasing melatonin and that waking earlier makes them sleepy. Comparing their schedule with young children's doesn't help show that changing the high school's start time reduced accidents. The missing connection isn't a difference between age groups.
- B
Being late to school is a different outcome from having a car accident. This might tell us something about punctuality, but it doesn't establish that the schedule change made driving safer or explain Granville's decline in crashes.
- C
This compares teenagers working during the day with teenagers attending school. It doesn't tell us that Granville's students changed how much they drove when the school schedule changed, or that the new schedule reduced their accidents. More driving by a different group doesn't supply that connection.
- D
Many accidents occurring in the evening doesn't tell us whether morning accidents fell after the change. We don't get a before-and-after comparison at all. Evening accidents could have been common both before and after. The answer doesn't connect the later start with the reduction we're trying to explain.
- ECorrect
This checks an alternative we hadn't specifically named: perhaps accidents were declining throughout the region anyway. Safer cars or a broad improvement in traffic enforcement, for example, might have made Granville's decline part of a general trend rather than an effect of its school schedule.
Instead, nearby teenage accidents rose while Granville's fell. That makes a shared regional improvement a less convincing explanation for Granville's result and gives us more reason to think something specific to Granville helped. It doesn't prove the school schedule was that something or establish that extra sleep was the mechanism. It does strengthen the example by showing that Granville's improvement ran against the surrounding trend.
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