Quote:
Career counselor: Many large international companies have changed their practices regarding international assignments. They are placing much more emphasis on helping spouses of expatriate employees to adjust to the foreign environment. This has reduced premature returns by 67 percent.
Which one of the following is an assumption upon which the career counselor’s argument depends?
(A) Spousal and marital difficulties were formerly responsible for many premature returns from foreign assignments.
(B) When an employee is placed in a foreign assignment for a year or less, his or her family sees the assignment as an adventure.
(C) Expatriate employees work long hours and travel a great deal, and their children make new friends at school, but spouses often have no friends and no work to support them while they’re abroad.
(D) The majority of international assignments today last for less than a year, but ten years ago, 70 percent of them lasted much longer than one year.
(E) Many companies now offer expatriate spouses language training, career guidance, and assistance in finding homes and schools.
The right answer is A. With any 'find the assumption' CR question, the most important thing to focus on is the conclusion arrived at, and what directly impacts that. In this case, the conclusion is that helping spouses settle has contributed to the huge drop in premature returns. However, the causation is not proved, all we see is that there is a correlation. We want to find something which suggests either that the efforts actually made it better for the spouses, or that spousal trouble was actually a big problem that needed to be addressed.
Option A - Suggests that spousal trouble was a reason for many premature returns. If true, this does complete the argument, since it suggests the disappearing of the problem was the biggest part of the drop in premature returns.
CORRECTOption B - Irrelevant. It doesn't address anything about spousal trouble or premature returns.
OUTOption C - This is a bit of a trap answer since it qualitatively suggest that spouses do face a hard time. However, it never makes the link between simply having a hard time and actually causing premature returns, which is what we're looking for.
OUTOption D - Once again, the length of the assignment is irrelevant. What we want is the link between spousal trouble and premature returns.
OUTOption E - This answer can appear a bit tempting since it actually talks about helping the spouses out. But it still doesn't establish the extent of the problem, or whether the measures mentioned are actually contributing to lower premature returns or not.
OUT