LSAT 113 – Section 3 – Question 09

LSAT 113 - Section 3 - Question 09

June 2002

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 1:25

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT113 S3 Q09
+LR
+Exp
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Sampling +Smpl
A
76%
167
B
1%
148
C
3%
160
D
6%
160
E
15%
161
137
150
164
 +Medium 146.265 +SubsectionMedium

As part of a survey, approximately 10,000 randomly selected individuals were telephoned and asked a number of questions about their income and savings. Those conducting the survey observed that the older the person being queried, the more likely it was that he or she would refuse to answer any of the questions. This finding clearly demonstrates that, in general, people are more willing when they are younger than when they are older to reveal personal financial information to strangers over the telephone.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The argument concludes that people become more unwilling to discuss personal finances with strangers over the phone throughout their lifetime. The author bases his conclusion on a survey that found that older people are more unwilling to discuss their personal finances with a surveyor over the phone than younger people are.

Identify and Describe Flaw
Our argument uses survey results about different generations of people to support a claim about how people change as they age. This conclusion doesn’t follow; if you want to make a claim about how people’s behaviors change throughout their lives, you should interview the same people at different points in their lives. All that the survey results tell us is how different generations differ behaviorally, not how one generation will change in the future.

A
offers no evidence that the individuals queried would have responded differently had they been asked the same questions in years prior to the survey
This addresses the issue of change over time. If we don’t know how the answers of the people surveyed would change over time, we cannot draw the conclusion about how anyone’s behavior from earlier in their life to later.
B
fails to specify the exact number of people who were telephoned as part of the survey
Knowing the exact number of people telephoned does not help our argument—it would not help us establish a connection between the older and younger people surveyed and how people change throughout their lives.
C
assumes without warrant that age is the main determinant of personal income and savings levels
Even if it were untrue that age was the main determinant of these factors, that would not damage the argument. Our argument is not focused on the level of income or savings, but rather on how forthcoming people of certain ages are with this information.
D
assumes from the outset what it purports to establish on the basis of a body of statistical evidence
This “cookie-cutter” answer choice refers to circular reasoning, which is not present in this argument. The study would have had to assume that people become less likely to share this information as they age. Since this was not the case, we can reject this answer choice.
E
provides no reason to believe that what is true of a given age group in general is also true of all individuals within that age group
Our argument is concerned with the difference between different age groups and how people change throughout their lives, not with whether or not generalizations are universally true within a group. This answer choice misses the mark.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 113 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply