Cause & Effect vs. Correlation Questions

@Lauren-Au, Great question. Cause and effect questions are generally showing you a cause and effect in the stimulus and asking some sort of question about it. With questions that have correlations, there are usually two things that are correlated with one another. Often times on correlation questions, the argument will be mistaking correlation for causation. There can be a lot of overlap between these topics, so it's really hard to just look at the question stem and be able to determine whether or not the argument is about cause and effect, correlation, or both. What you need to do is read the argument carefully in the stimulus—this will help you to see what's going on and whether or not the stimulus is dealing with cause and effect, correlation, neither, or both. For this question, I'd consider it to be a weaken question, as we're looking to invalidate the use of the ratings for the agency's purpose, so we're weakening the chances of it being a useful tool. Hope this helps. Let us know if you'd like any more clarification!

Thank you for the explanation!

@Lauren-Au, you're welcome! Happy it helped!