Q23 - A medical journal used a questionnaire

[nflamel69]

I was between A and C. While C seemed super attractive, I think it didn't address the issue of what proportion who returned the survey relationship to the total proportion. What if only 1 percent of people who received the survey returned it? then that means 0.62 percent actually supports it. So why is C right in this case?

[like333]

I'd like to know this one too. I looked at A as the right answer because the stem says "will have the desired effect" and not "does have the desired effect", in which case I could see C being correct.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your questions!

I don't think the stimulus saying "will" is relevant.

So, the premise here is that 62% of people who returned the questionnaire favor the new format. On this basis, the magazine is deciding, i.e., concluding, to make the switch.

The big question here is, how representative is this questionnaire? What if it was only sent to a hundred random magazine readers, out of a million total? Then there would be a good chance that it's not representative.

(C) strengthens the proposal by establishing that the surveyed group is representative of the magazine's readership in general. I think "surveyed" should be interpreted to refer to the people who returned the questionnaire. If a questionnaire shows up in my mailbox and I never open the envelope, we can't say that I have been surveyed. So we don't need to worry about whether the people who sent the thing back are representative; answer (C) is actually referring to them.

Even if you're not sure about that, (A) is a worse answer because it leaves open the much more important issue of whether the surveyed readers are representative of the readers in general. Okay, maybe 90 percent returned the questionnaire .... but 90 percent of how many? If only ten people got it, then we haven't necessarily learned much about the readership. We need to know whether the views of the surveyed people correspond to the views of the overall group.

Does that clear this one up for you?

[okaroshinn]

I think also a major reason why (C) is correct is because it states that "The percentage of surveyed readers who like the format change was almost the same as the percentage of the entire potential readership would like the format change." The key part is "entire potential readership". The goal of this survey is to increase the amount of people who actually read the journal. So if most of the people who already read the journal favor the change (62%) is almost the same as those who WOULD read the paper if the change occurred, then the journal made the right decision in changing the format to increase the amount of people that would read it. I see why (A) would be tempting but the crux of the issue still lies in increasing the readership, which (C) is the only choice that attempts to address it. It's not a perfect answer but it does "provide the best evidence that the journal's decision will have the desired effect."