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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 28 Apr 2020, 13:15
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KaranB1
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Quote:
(D) boys’ stress patterns do

In answer choice D,"Do" can only refer to present simple verb "indicate" and therefore answer choice looks like - boys’ stress patterns indicate.

Is my understanding correct? Kindly suggest.
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Let's review some basic examples that might help with this:

    Q: "Do you eat bhindi masala?"
    A: "Yes, I do." (NOT "Yes, I am.")

    Q: "Does Tim eat horse steak?"
    A: "Yes, he does." (NOT "Yes, he is.")

    Q: "Do Tim's kids sleep in a doghouse?"
    A: "Yes, they do." (NOT "Yes, they are.")

In all three cases above, it makes sense to use some form of "to do" in the question, so it also makes sense to use some form of "to do" as a placeholder.

    Q: "Are you eating pelmeni?"
    A: "Yes, I am." (NOT "Yes, I do.")

    Q: "Is Tim eating posole?"
    A: "Yes, he is." (NOT "Yes, he does.")

    Q: "Are Tim's kids sleeping in a doghouse?"
    A: "Yes, they are." (NOT "Yes, they do.")

In these examples, it makes sense to use some form of "to be" in the question, so it also makes sense to use some form of "to be" as a placeholder.

We can apply a similar Q/A "test" in this example:

    Q: "Are patterns of stress that girls experience more likely to result in depression?"
    A: "Yes, they are." (NOT "Yes, they do.")

    Q: "Do the results of a recent study indicate {X}?"
    A: "Yes, they do." (NOT "Yes, they are.")

So, yes, it would make sense to use "do" as a placeholder for "indicate". But since we want a placeholder for "are" ("... the patterns of stress that girls experience are..."), it makes sense to use "are" as a placeholder.

You might also want to check out this thorough response by EducationAisle.

I hope that helps!
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 18 Aug 2020, 20:01
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AjiteshArun
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Hi experts AjiteshArun , egmat , GMATNinja bb
Please explain why "are" is used here

My thoughts- 'Are' is used to express the "end result" i.e Depression and 'those' is referring back to the "patterns" and it is clear that in every other option besides A the end result is not mentioned.
And it is the end result of patterns that we are comparing not the patterns themselves.
Hi bratbg,

I'm not sure what you mean by "end result", but this is the sentence that option A leads to:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that

the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression
than
those that boys experience are (likely to result in depression).

The present tense are is used to communicate a "fact" or "truth" about the patterns.
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Hi AjiteshArun

If in B, ( what boys experience ) are is present then could it be right sentence?

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are what boys experience.

please suggest EducationAisle AjiteshArun
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 19 Aug 2020, 03:31
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Hi AjiteshArun

If in B, ( what boys experience ) are is present then could it be right sentence?

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are what boys experience.

please suggest EducationAisle AjiteshArun
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Hi imSKR,

There would be two problems with that:
1. Meaning call: "What boys experience" is just too broad, as it refers to everything boys experience. We need to restrict the idea here to the patterns of stress that boys experience.

2. Subject-verb agreement: "What boys experience" is a noun clause. Noun clauses are singular, so the are (plural) would not be correct. We can turn the structure around to see why are would not work:

what boys experience are likely to result in depression
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 01 Dec 2020, 22:50
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Onell
Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are those that boys experience.

(A) are those that boys experience

(B) what boys experience

(C) boys’ experience would

(D) boys’ stress patterns do

(E) stress patterns of boys
Show more

This question is based on Comparison and Structure.

The point of comparison in this sentence is that patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are the patterns of stress that boys experience. The comparison is complete and accurate in Option A because the pronoun ‘those’ refers to “patterns of stress”. So, A is the best of all the options.

The relative pronoun ‘what’ is used to begin a noun clause, so we could say that the clause beginning with ‘what’ acts as the antecedent or the subject itself. When an antecedent is already mentioned in the sentence (in this case, “patterns of stress”), we do not use the relative pronoun ‘what’ to refer to it. We use a demonstrative pronoun such as those, this etc. Since this option contains the relative pronoun ‘what’, Option B can be eliminated.

Option C compares patterns of stress with boys’ experience. Since the comparison is illogical, Option C can be eliminated.

The comparison implied by Option D is - the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than boys’ stress patterns do.
To make the comparison parallel, “patterns of stress that girls experience” should be compared with “patterns of stress that boys experience”, not “boys’ stress patterns”.
Furthermore, the verb ‘are’ cannot be compared with the verb ‘do’. The former implies a state of being and the latter an action. The phrase ‘do more likely’ makes no sense at all. So, Option D can be eliminated.

The definite article is missing in this option, so that affects parallelism. The lack of a verb also prevents the comparison from being complete. So, Option E can be eliminated.

Therefore, A is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 04 Jun 2021, 00:17
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EducationAisle
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Shouldn't it be:

"Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than those that boys experience."

without (are) repeated? It makes me confused since those refer back to "the patterns of stress". I don't think we need to repeat the verb (are) here, do we?
You ask a good question. The repetition of a verb (are in this case) is optional in comparison sentences. However, if not repeating the verb creates an ambiguous sentence, then we have to repeat the verb.

Example when not repeating the verb is ok

Plants are more efficient than fungi at acquiring carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.

Here, we don’t have to repeat are, since there is no ambiguity. So, we don’t need to say:

Plants are more efficient than are fungi at acquiring carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, and converting it to energy-rich sugars.

Example when not repeating the verb is not ok

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are those that boys experience.

Let us expand the sentence:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are patters of stress that boys experience.

Or

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than patters of stress that boys experience are (likely to result in depression).

If we omit the verb, then the sentence would be:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than those that boys experience.

Or

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than patterns of stress that boys experience.

This sentence can be misinterpreted as:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than (in) patterns of stress that boys experience.

In other words, the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result

i) in depression than
ii) (in) patterns of stress that boys experience.

So, the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression; the patterns of stress that girls experience are less likely to result in patterns of stress that boys experience. However, this is clearly not the intended meaning.

The repetition of the verb are ensures that the sentence cannot be interpreted this way.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses comparison ambiguity, its applications and examples in significant detail. If you can PM you email-id, I can send you the corresponding section.
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Hello Sir,
How would the same sentence be written in case I were to omit the verb 'are' and use only "than those of". What are the structural changes I have to make?
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 04 Jun 2021, 00:45
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Vishalcv
How would the same sentence be written in case I were to omit the verb 'are' and use only "than those of". What are the structural changes I have to make?
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Hi Vishal, if you have to omit the verb, then following is one way to articulate the sentence:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely than those that boys experience, to result in depression.
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 28 Oct 2021, 07:30
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Hello,

So, if choice D were: "boys’ stress patterns are"., would it be correct ?

For me, it should be correct.

Thanks

EducationAisle
sheolokesh
I could understand the difference between A and D... Both are gramatically correct.
However I think there is nothing wrong in D... In fact D is more concise..
D: boys’ stress patterns do

This means that the stress patterns of girls more likely leading to depression than stress patterns of boys do(leading to depression)..

But please help me why A is recommended to D? For the sake of parallelism?
Hello! Let’s complete the intended sentence:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than the patterns of stress that boys experience are likely to result in.

A says:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than those (patterns of stress) that boys experience are likely to result in.

With D, the sentence would be:

Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than boys’ stress patterns do.

So, if you compare this with the intended sentence, at the very least, do is trying to substitute for are likely to result in. Notice that are is an auxiliary verb.

I am pretty sure (unless someone can cite an example to the contrary) that do (and similarly did/does ) cannot substitute for auxiliary verbs. do/did/does can only substitute for main verbs. So, following would be correct:

He runs faster than his classmates do.
- do correctly substitutes for main verb runs

Following would be incorrect:

Jack is more successful than his brothers do.
- do cannot substitute for auxiliary verb is

The correct sentence would be:

Jack is more successful than his brothers are.

If you see any example that violates this, let’s discuss.
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 28 Oct 2021, 09:58
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Naptiste
Hello,

So, if choice D were: "boys’ stress patterns are"., would it be correct ?

For me, it should be correct.
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This would take care of the verb issue, but this modified version of D would still loose out to A on parallelism front:

Notice the perfect parallelism in A:

...patterns of stress that girls experience

is being compared with:

...those (patterns of stress) that boys experience
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 09 Jun 2022, 11:41
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Onell
Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are those that boys experience.

3 things:
1) Patterns of stress (girls) and patterns of stress (boys) are being compared. (B) and (C) are out.
2) We are comparing not just the patterns themselves but how likely they result in depression. We need a verb. (E) is out.
3) "Do" vs. "Are" - the non-underlined portion mentions "are" - (A) is our winner.

(A) are those that boys experience

(B) what boys experience

(C) boys’ experience would

(D) boys’ stress patterns do

(E) stress patterns of boys
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 05 Apr 2023, 14:15
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thanks for writing about it! unfortunately, every second teenager is really stressed and this leads to terrible consequences (for example, my daughter had insomnia and we managed it only thanks to a psychotherapist. I recommend that you read about the signs of stress here. this will help you take your condition more seriously
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 17 Sep 2023, 10:00
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I eliminated A because I tought that it refers back to girls, since girls is closest plural noun to those. What am I missing?

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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 20 Sep 2023, 11:38
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Anonymoux
I eliminated A because I tought that it refers back to girls, since girls is closest plural noun to those. What am I missing?

Posted from my mobile device
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Having multiple options for a pronoun isn't necessarily a dealbreaker. The GMAT is fairly lenient when it comes to that sort of thing, and there's certainly no rule that says that a pronoun MUST refer to the closest noun.

In this case, replacing "those" with "girls" makes absolutely no sense, so it's fairly obvious that "those" must refer to "patterns of stress" instead.

For more on pronoun ambiguity, check out this creaky old video or this newer, shorter one.
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate 30 Nov 2023, 06:25
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Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than are those that boys experience.

Option Elimination - First, let's come out of the native vs non-native speaker split. If you are native, wonderful. But if you are not, don't consider that as a blocker. Try to understand the issue and logically address it. You must have mastered your native language wonderfully, so have the same approach and mindset here. Give it some practice and time, and see the results. Back to our question now.

(A) are those that boys experience - let's expand it. Many teenagers undergo stress, but results of a recent study indicate that the patterns of stress that girls experience are more likely to result in depression than those (the patterns of stress) that boys experience are (likely to result in depression). We are comprising here the stress patterns of boys and girls and the relative likelihood of those patterns into depression (mind you, we are not comparing the likelihood of depression for one and some other likelihood for another - keep this in mind. It'll help to eliminate other options.)

(B) what boys experience - To understand the issue here, let's first understand the correct sentence.
The structure of the correct sentence is
"The patterns of stress that girls experience," so logically for comparison, what will you expect? "the patterns of stress that boys experience"? Right? Yes. The structure is you have a noun phrase, and then you have a relative clause introduced by "that" to elaborate on the stress or modify the noun "stress." But instead of having the same structure, we have "what boys experience," which is modifying what? Ideally, it would be "the patterns of stress," but the author beautifully removed that and left the noun clause introduced by "what." So, to consolidate our learnings

"The patterns of stress that girls experience" vs. "what boys experience" or let's see the structure.

"Noun phrase + relative clause to modify the noun" vs. " noun clause" modifying nothing. Which is fundamentally wrong.

In maths lingo, we are comparing 1=2. Is it correct? No. So how can this parallelism error be correct in a language, which, in this case, is English? Does that make sense?

(C) boys’ experience would - This shatters the parallelism, but on top, it also adds the hypothetical by "would," which ensures that this option becomes atrociously wrong.

(D) boys’ stress patterns do - "do" action verb doesn't replace the "are" helping verb or the verb of being.

(E) stress patterns of boys - I'm afraid that's wrong for two reasons.

1. Structure - let's look at the structure of the correct option to understand the drastic different pattern this option has.

On the left, we have "The patterns of stress that girls experience" - We have "the" definite article + noun (patterns) + preposition (of) + noun (stress) + relative clause to modify the noun "stress."

On the right side, we have "stress patterns of boys." We have the adjective "stress" - mind you, it's not a noun anymore that we modified with the relative clause in the earlier part - then we have the noun "patterns" + preposition (of) + noun (boys). So, to consolidate, we have

"The patterns of stress that girls experience" vs."stress patterns of boys." So, on one side, we have apples; on the other, we have oranges. Can they be parallel? No.

2. On the left side, the effect of stress patterns that girls experience results in "depression." The intended meaning is that the stress patterns that boys experience are less likely to result in the same outcome, which is "depression." Ok, so the outcome of the left side is more depression. On the right side, what is the outcome? Depression? No. Not mentioned here. It can be "they fell sick," "they watched a movie," or " they had a couple of drinks." You see, this is not just wrong but a big blunder. Options C and E are the worst of all. In option C, at least the issue is visible, but in option E, it's entangled, so unless we unpeel it on the surface, it looks okay; it's a classic deception.
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