Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to

Question

Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of their jobs. On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits." Therefore, the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits.

The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

A. It fails to adequately address the possibility that some categories rated in the survey matter far less to the employees than do others.
B. It fails to adequately address the possibility that employees gave even lower satisfaction ratings in one or more categories other than "Skills Training."
C. It overlooks the possibility that many individual employees gave satisfaction ratings that differed significantly from the average ratings.
D. It overlooks the possibility that employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another.
E. It overlooks the possibility that some employees who overall felt the least satisfied with their jobs did not fill out the survey.

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Why is the answer here A?

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Official Answer

A

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MartyMurray · Accepted Answer

Explanation

Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of their jobs. On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits." Therefore, the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits.

The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

The author has concluded the following:

the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits

The support for the conclusion is the following:

On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits."

We see that the author has reasoned that, by improving what employees are less satisfied with, the company can do more to improve employee satisfaction than it would if it improved what employees are more satisfied with.

The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

The correct answer will highlight a flaw in the argument. In other words it will highlight a flaw in the support for the conclusion.

A. It fails to adequately address the possibility that some categories rated in the survey matter far less to the employees than do others.

This choice highlights a flaw in the argument. It brings up the fact that, by jumping from the "ratings" employees gave in different categories to a conclusion about how best to improve employee satisfaction, it has failed to address the possibility that there may be another factor that affects how improvements affect employee satisfaction, and that factor is what matters to employees.

After all, it could be the case that, an aspect of their jobs that employees rated poorly is also an aspect that the employees don't really care about anyway. So, improving that aspect may not do as much to improve employee satisfaction as improving another aspect would.

Keep

B. It fails to adequately address the possibility that employees gave even lower satisfaction ratings in one or more categories other than "Skills Training."

It's true that the argument does not address the possibility that employees gave even lower satisfaction ratings in one or more categories other than "Skills Training." At the same time, the fact that the argument does not address that possibility is not a flaw.

After all, the conclusion is about the effect of improving skills training versus the effect of increasing wages and benefits. So, how employees rated other aspects of their jobs is irrelevant.

Eliminate.

C. It overlooks the possibility that many individual employees gave satisfaction ratings that differed significantly from the average ratings.

The conclusion is about what can be done to improve "overall employee satisfaction." In other words, it's about what can be done to improve "average" satisfaction.

So, "the possibility that many individual employees gave satisfaction ratings that differed significantly from the average ratings" doesn't matter since, regardless of whether many employees did so, it could still be the case that, by improving the aspects of the company that employees rated the lowest, the company would do the most to improve overall employee satisfaction.

Eliminate.

D. It overlooks the possibility that employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another.

Notice that, even if employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another, they still gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits" on average.

In other words, while they may not all have rated "Skills Training" or "Wages and Benefits" in the same way, they did still rate one higher than the other.

For example, one employee could have rated "Skills Training" 5/10 and "Wages and Benefits" 7/10 while another gave the two categories ratings of 4/10 and 6/10 respectively, and we'd still have lower ratings for "Skills Training" from both employees.

Eliminate.

E. It overlooks the possibility that some employees who overall felt the least satisfied with their jobs did not fill out the survey.

As long as a large majority of the employees filled out the survey, the information it provides should indicate what the company can do to improve "overall employee satisfaction."

So, even if "some employees" who felt the least satisfied did not fill out the survey, the argument still works.

Eliminate.

Correct answer:   A

Cav · Answer

The conclusion of the argument is that the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits. This is based on the fact that skills training received lower average satisfaction ratings than did wages and benefits.

Why is (A) the correct asnwer choice?

Why is (A) the correct asnwer choice?

Cav · Answer

Thank you  MartyMurray . Your explanation is incredibly helpful.

JuniqueLid · Answer

Thanks everyone for your comment on this question. It’s very helpful.

Answer choice (A) is not a hard one to pick in the context of GMAT test but I’m curious how (D) can be more definitely ruled out.

(D) says It overlooks the possibility that employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another.

What if, for argument’s sake, some people interpreted a smaller number rating means more satisfaction and the others interpreted a larger number rating means more satisfaction. Forgetting about the possible averages values you can get since that’s more of a math question, this situation would actually cause the same average ratings to mean completely opposite things - that is, if more people thought small number meant satisfaction and they were genuinely more satisfied with “skill training” than “wage”, then there is no need to focus company efforts on training.

Admittedly, if all the surveyed employees and the company applied common sense that is common to our universe, this strange situation is unlikely to occur - but, what if?

BNDN · Answer

Does anyone have clarity on why D is not an option?

MartyMurray · Answer

Here's (D):

D. It overlooks the possibility that employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another.

Notice that, in (D), the point is that employees may have interpreted the rating scale "differently from one another.'

So, (D) does not suggest that it's possible that the employees were confused by the rating scale and interpreted it  incorrectly . Such a situation would involve issues other than what (D) mentions.

A choice that says that the argument is flawed because it fails to consider that the employees may have interpreted the rating scale incorrectly might be correct.

At the same time, since (D) is about differences in interpretation rather than mistakes in interpretation, (D) does not present a flaw in the argument.

KarishmaB · Answer

Responding to a pm:

Yes, you can evaluate it from the perspective of weighted averages. Think about it this way - There are n factors and each employee is asked to rate it and hence each factor gets a score. We found that skills training score was lower than wages score. Does it mean that employee satisfaction will improve more by improving skills training? No. That depends on what weightage the employees give to each factor. Say weightage given to training is 1 but that given to wages is 100. Then even a small increase in wages could improve the overall employee satisfaction a great deal while increasing training opportunities substantially may have almost no impact on employee satisfaction.

That is why (A) works.

AditiDeokar · Answer

Hi  MartyMurray , thank you for the below.

I have a question - I was confused between choice A and E. My reasoning was that even if there are other factors (  It fails to adequately address the possibility that some categories rated in the survey matter far less to the employees than do others.), The fact that we improve skills training would atleast lead to some improvement and hence rejected this option. Could you help me with this.

guddo · Answer

I think the mix-up is you're missing what the argument's conclusion actually is. It's saying improving skills training will boost satisfaction  more than  improving wages would.

I suppose option A wrecks that because if employees don't care much about skills training, then improving it won't boost overall satisfaction much, even with a low rating. Improving wages might matter more.

Option E just questions if the survey missed some unhappy people. That doesn't really break the direct comparison between those two categories. So A is the sharper criticism.

MartyMurray · Answer

I think you didn't read (A) accurately. The point of (A) is not that there are "other" factors not included in the survey. It's that, of the categories that  are  included, some may matter more than others.

So, it could be that, even though skills training got a lower rating, improving it may not be the most effective choice because it doesn't matter as much to employees as wages and benefits.

Takeaway:  To get Critical Reasoning questions correct consistently, when reading answer choices, we have to be super careful to ensure that we're taking the correct meanings from them.

If the meaning of a choice isn't easy to determine, we can use context clues to confirm what the choice is meant to convey. For instance, in this case, the fact that the argument involves a comparison of two categories, "Skills Training" and "Wages and Benefits" and choice (A) also involves a comparison of "some categories" and "others" is one clue indicating that the "some categories" and "others" mentioned in (A) are all categories included in the survey.

eaat · Answer

I think I misunderstood D. I thought that incorrectly they could have got the scale wrong, so instead of rating 5 for really high, they rated it as 1. And so therefore, if they were trying to improve that, people might rate lower scores, and therefore it gave a lower satisfaction rating. Is that a wrong assumption to make?

guddo · Answer

Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of their jobs. On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits." Therefore, the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits.

The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

The executive concludes that improving skills training would raise overall employee satisfaction more than increasing wages and benefits, just because employees gave skills training a lower average rating.  The flaw  is that a lower rating does not by itself show that improving that category would matter more overall.  A category can be rated lower but still matter less  to employees than another category.

A. It fails to adequately address the possibility that some categories rated in the survey matter far less to the employees than do others.

This is the best answer. The argument assumes that the category with the lower satisfaction rating is the one whose improvement would do more to raise overall satisfaction. But that does not follow unless the two categories matter equally to employees. If wages and benefits matter much more, then improving them could increase overall satisfaction more even if their current rating is higher.

B. It fails to adequately address the possibility that employees gave even lower satisfaction ratings in one or more categories other than "Skills Training."

This is not the key flaw. Even if some other category was rated even lower, that would not directly weaken the executive’s specific comparison between skills training and wages and benefits.

C. It overlooks the possibility that many individual employees gave satisfaction ratings that differed significantly from the average ratings.

This is not the main problem. The executive’s conclusion is based on average ratings, so variation around the average does not by itself undermine the reasoning.

D. It overlooks the possibility that employees interpret the numeric rating scale differently from one another.

This is too general. Unless there is reason to think this affected one category differently from the other, it does not specifically weaken the comparison the executive makes.

E. It overlooks the possibility that some employees who overall felt the least satisfied with their jobs did not fill out the survey.

This could raise a general survey-bias concern, but it does not specifically weaken the claim that improving one category would raise satisfaction more than improving the other.

Answer: (A)

Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to

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