A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought

Question

A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought a psychologist’s help with a personal problem. Of those responding who had received treatment for 6 months or less, 20 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Of those responding who had received longer treatment, 36 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Therefore, psychological treatment lasting more than 6 months is more effective than shorter-term treatment.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

(A) Of the respondents who had received treatment for longer than 6 months, 10 percent said that treatment made things worse.

(B) Patients who had received treatment for longer than 6 months were more likely to respond to the survey than were those who had received treatment for a shorter time.

(C) Patients who feel they are doing well in treatment tend to remain in treatment, while those who are doing poorly tend to quit earlier.

(D) Patients who were dissatisfied with their treatment were more likely to feel a need to express their feelings about it and thus to return the survey.

(E) Many psychologists encourage their patients to receive treatment for longer than 6 months.

Source: LSAT

VeritasPrepBrandon · Accepted Answer

This critical reasoning question focuses on a flawed use of statistics. A higher percentage of people who received treatment for longer than 6 months felt a lot better than did those who received treatment for under 6 months. The interesting thing about this question is that one pool leads directly into the other. People must receive therapy for less than 6 months before converting into the other pool and receiving therapy for more than 6 months.

Answer choice C points this out and weakens the argument effectively. If people are more likely to stay in therapy longer if it is going well, then a higher percentage of those people in therapy for a longer time will respond positively than will those who receive therapy for shorter time periods. Thus it is not necessarily the longer therapy that is more effective, but rather that for people who find therapy effective they stay with therapy longer. This could be thought of as reverse causation of sorts. Instead of long therapy causing more positive results, more positive results will result in longer therapy.

I hope this helps!!!

VeritasPrepBrandon · Answer

Answer choice B in this question is wrong because it does not specify anything about those who felt it helped being more or less likely to respond, but rather just focuses on those who have received therapy for a longer time period being more likely to respond. Basically it is not focused on the correct differentiator. If there were 100 people who received therapy for more than 6 months and 100 people who received therapy for less than 6 months, and 50 of the people who received therapy for more than 6 months replied, but only 30 of those who received therapy for under 6 months replied, this does not change the fact that a higher percentage of the respondents of the longer therapy were helped.

[quote="mba1382"]Hi Brandon,

I was stuck between B & C. Could you please point out the flaw in the option B? Will appreciate. Thanks.

Hi Brandon,

I was stuck between B & C. Could you please point out the flaw in the option B? Will appreciate. Thanks.

mba1382 · Answer

Hi Brandon,

I was stuck between B & C. Could you please point out the flaw in the option B? Will appreciate. Thanks.

mba1382 · Answer

Thanks Brendon. Indeed nice explanation :-)

Sidhrt · Answer

Well yes, initially it seems that answer c is wrong; However,option c is right as it directly affects the # of people surveyed ( who remained and who left) whereas the option b is more on doubt about the degree of likeliness to respond or surveyed but does not communicate whether they have actually participated in survey or not. But option C, if true, will surly affect the difference in # of respondents responded between the two groups.

chesstitans · Answer

there is a similar question and the answer is B because there the answer C does not appear!
this is actually a mix question of explanation and weaken; clearly, the answer not only gives an explanation, but also weakens the claim that the treatment lasting more than 6 months is more effective.

akumawat · Answer

So when i was doing this question I was confused between B, C, D. Quick Ans why i choose C :-

B) Patients who had received treatment for longer than 6 months were more likely to respond to the survey than were those who had received treatment for a shorter time.   Means, For folks who had received treatment for longer than 6 months, both Negative responders and positive responders (in the same proportion) will be more likely to repond to the survey. We got 36% positive feedback. Unless told specifically that negative responders (in this group i.e. folks who had received treatment for longer than 6 months) are more than positive responders, we could say that more months is good, as we got 36% positive result.

(C) Patients who feel they are doing well in treatment tend to remain in treatment, while those who are doing poorly tend to quit earlier.   So if both positive and negative people are equaly likely to repond to the survey, then we can say that greater positive feedback gives better satisfaction or result.

Now assume a situation in which positive users are more likely to continue the treatment for more than 6 months, making proportion of positive users more. So clearly this could weaken the argument. AS this could be a case where only satisfied people are opting for more than 6 months period. So may be treatment will result same effect, but as positive feedback people are more in the group the survey will result in 36% positive feedback. So ans c is correct.  
 
(D) Patients who were dissatisfied with their treatment were more likely to feel a need to express their feelings about it and thus to return the survey.  Same as this hold true for both the groups i.e. group 1 -- who had treatment for less than 6 months and group 2- who had treatment for more than 6 months.

hiranmay · Answer

A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought a psychologist’s help with a personal problem. Of those responding who had received treatment for 6 months or less, 20 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Of those responding who had received longer treatment, 36 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Therefore, psychological treatment lasting more than 6 months is more effective than shorter-term treatment.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
 Analysis: Weaken
duration --> made things better
case-1: less than 6 M --> 20%
case-2: more than 6 M --> 36%
Cause ---> effect
Conclusion: more than 6M treatment --> more effective
A1: If "made things worse" % is more for case-2 than case-1, the conclusion will be weaken
A2: if cause and effect relation reversed(more effective that's why more time) then the conclusion will be weaken

(A) Of the respondents who had received treatment for longer than 6 months, 10 percent said that treatment made things worse. --> we don't know how much from case-1 says "made tings worse"

(B) Patients who had received treatment for longer than 6 months were more likely to respond to the survey than were those who had received treatment for a shorter time. --> we are talking about the % of effectiveness, so the more/less patents will not weaken the argument

(C) Patients who feel they are doing well in treatment tend to remain in treatment, while those who are doing poorly tend to quit earlier. -->  correct : reverse the cause-effect relationship: align w/ analysis-A2

(D) Patients who were dissatisfied with their treatment were more likely to feel a need to express their feelings about it and thus to return the survey. --> same as B

(E) Many psychologists encourage their patients to receive treatment for longer than 6 months. --> irrelevant: cant weaken the argument

Bambi2021 · Answer

Something that struck my mind...

How come those LSAT CR questions are often easier than the GMAT CR questions? Especially those with weaken/strengthen. GMAT always have some subtle detail that, if you dont notice it, you are likely to get extremely confused. LSAT on the other hand, seems less focused on such extrathematic details.

Posted from my mobile device

abhola · Answer

Well Bambi2021 , I think this is flawed reasoning in itself.

IMHO, this question is indeed tricky. Depends upon which assumption one identifies here. Let me share my perspective. For those who identified only a sampling assumption or a comparison assumption, then choice B may have looked tempting. For those who identified only a causation assumption (or maybe all of the 3), this question gets slightly easier. This means one needs to get adept at finding as many assumptions during their practise sessions as possible. So one takeaway is not to generalize as you may already have well-developed reasoning. Hope you see the point.

unraveled · Answer

This is a straight forward passage as the conclusion revolves around the 6-month treatment period and as the question stem asks for a weakener.
Problem may arise if someone misunderstands the conclusion or if someone faces difficulty in understanding the options.

Only B and C are the contenders. I almost fell for B when i read it but when i read C i liked is equally. I realised that since there can't be two right answers, i may have missed something and that was about the fact that while reading the options i kind of felt that i need to find a support for the passage - not as in a strengthener but as in a resolve the issue. This is a problem that i face sometimes and many might be facing. B is actually somewhat supports that i found after rereading. However, the causation point brought by C certainly made more sense.

You may sometime find yourself struggling with a 25%-difficulty level question but not with 85% one. This happens with me as well.

Hope you got the point.

Answer C.

Ayushi0002 · Answer

Because it is in percent, I don't think the actual number should matter here. People who had more than 6 months of therapy were more likely to respond should work in a case where no. of participants are given and we see more people being happy with the long term thing. 
Here there is a definitive differentiation between them and so it doesn't matter that how many people responded - If you stay you are likely to benefit from the long term therapy.

RashmikaAnumula35 · Answer

Option B is wrong because the argument clearly says "of those responding..." C is correct

A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought

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A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought

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