Logical reasoning PrepTest 132 · Section 2 · Question 9

Incorrect. The conclusion here is pretty definitive—"cannot reliably determine." This answer is too weak to establish that when it says "may depend at least in part"—that language in an answer choice is more likely to be correct in a Strengthen with Necessary Premise question.

Incorrect. The stimulus establishes what it believes to be an inherent flaw in retrospective studies that means they can never reliably determine the causes of characteristics, not just when—as this answer says—no correlations can be found.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Retrospective studies look at present characteristics and try to figure out the cause of them. They rely on people reporting their pasts, so they're unreliable.

Answer Anticipation:
A lot of the difficulty of this question comes down to the excessive verbiage in the stimulus! Stripped down, the argument ends up being a definition, followed by a premise/conclusion with clear indicator words ("Because... however"). The argument itself is that the data in these studies is self-reported, so it's unreliable. Since the argument never establishes that self-reported data is unreliable, the correct answer will have to do so.

Answer Explanation:
This answer directly states that the reports made by subjects about their pasts are "highly susceptible to inaccuracy"—in other words, they're unreliable. By establishing that these reports the argument relies on are unreliable, the conclusion is properly drawn.

Key Takeaway:
Try to strip arguments down as much as possible without losing the flow of logic. Many (if not most) questions in the LR section use excessive verbiage in order to distract you from the main issues and argument! This can be a good thing to practice after you understand a question—see how far you can strip it down without losing anything relevant to the correct answer.

Incorrect. This answer is the inverse of the correct connection—the argument relies on the self-reported data being unreliable preventing conclusions from being drawn, not reliable data allowing conclusions to be drawn.

Incorrect. These studies needing to do so doesn't prove that the conclusions drawn from them are or aren't reliable, so this answer is incorrect.