The Governor's recent direct mail survey on the environment

I seem to loose concentration while julia is piercing my eyes.

Can someone please explain how is option D correct?

Thanks in advance.

This is a Kalpan Question and OA is D. Abhishek009, souvik101990 chetan2u, please update the question.

Thanks for reporting. I have updated it

Any OE? I am unable to relate OA with the premise given.

I didn't find OE too good. Here is the best explanation that I can think of.


Question Stem: Which of the following best expresses the author's point?

Meaning: You can say that this is an Inference Question, but I'd say that this is a Primary Purpose Question.


Here is how the argument and OA connect.


Notice the bold texts as they are the Key words to understand why the author argues that the sample of survey is flawed.

Argument: The Governor's recent direct mail survey on the environment showed that 80 percent of those who responded, and thus allegedly the vast majority of the state's residents, support increased state spending for the environmentally safe disposal of solid waste. But we should expect that most of the people who respond to an environmental survey are in favor of spending money to protect the environment.

Still the argument doesn't make any sense. I will leave this question, there are far better questions to worry about than this one.

This isn't a very GMAT-like question, but it is testing a fundamental logical issue, an issue that is also tested occasionally in GMAT CR. If you do a survey, and 80% of respondents say "yes" about some issue, that does not necessarily mean that 80% of people overall would say "yes". You can only safely conclude that if you know the survey was based on a representative random sample of the overall population (and the sample needs to be sufficiently large). Otherwise there may be "sample bias". This is a problem with internet surveys; the people who respond to internet surveys are often the people who feel most enthusiastic about the subject of the survey (and the visitors to a given website are not usually a random sample of the population either).

That's the argument in this question. The author is suggesting that the people who respond to a survey about the environment are likely to be people who feel most enthusiastic about environmental issues. So the author is suggesting the survey results might be biased, and the '80%' number might not reflect the opinions of the population at large. That's what makes D the right answer.

The Governor's recent direct mail survey on the environment showed that 80 percent of those who responded, and thus allegedly the vast majority of the state's residents, support increased state spending for the environmentally safe disposal of solid waste. But we should expect that most of the people who respond to an environmental survey are in favor of spending money to protect the environment.

Which of the following best expresses the author's point?
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A. The survey was mailed only to those citizens who are environmentalists.

B. Most citizens are poor judges of how the state's revenues should be spent.

C. The survey failed because it neglected to ask citizens where the money for the increased spending should come from.

D. Those who responded to the survey are not truly representative of the state's residents.

E. The state does not need to spend more money to dispose of solid waste.
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One of the questions when prethinking gives the right answer immediately.
We have respondents. 80% of which support extending spending of money on environment.
But we have author's "BUT".
"But we should expect that most of the people who respond to an environmental survey are in favor of spending money to protect the environment. "
This means that the survey does not reflect the real reality.

Example. You do the survey. You ask 2000 people to participate. And 1000 "non-environmetalists" refuse to do so. Because it does not bother them, it is not interesting to them (if they participated they would be likely against the extended spending). And from the other 1000 participants (we will call the environmentalists - it is not true of course but) 800 showed their support for additional spending. So formally we have 800 supporters among 1000 - it is 80%, but really we have 800 fron 2000 - it is only 40%.

So the survey is not representative. it is option D. No one other option gives us so exact answer.

One more thing. I can not agree 100% that it is not really GMAT-like question.
Why? Because GMAT like the word "representative" very much. And the option with such word in it will be the answer more likely.

The actual confusion lies b/w A & D. Let's see both of them one by one:
A. In the first line of the paragraph its written, "of those who responded", this gives a clear indication that mail would have been sent to all of the residents, may be (at best) those who responded could have been environmentalists. This option is about 'mail sent' not about who has responded. Hence, we can safely eliminate A.
D. In the last line of paragraph author has given his opinion and said "people who respond to an environmental survey are in favor of spending money", this indicates that the author is of view that, people who respond to such survey are a small subset of the entire population of the state and it can't be taken as the precise verdict.

Rest of the options I felt were out of context (Let me know if you want explanation for these three as well). To be honest first time when doing it under timer I had eliminated D due to the use of word 'not truly' and had chosen A. And I still believe D is not the most perfect answer but detailed reading suggested why A should be eliminated hence, D is our winner on this occasion.

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