Q13 - A six-month public health campaign

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Correlation: Health campaign and incidence of flu
Conclusion: The campaign worked!

Answer Anticipation:
When we are tasked with strengthening a Correlation/Causation flaw, we should look for answers that 1) rule out an alternative cause; 2) show another incidence of the cause and effect going together; or 3) show an example where the cause and effect were both missing.

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Ooh, interesting. This answer choice suggests that the campaign was successful in getting people to wash their hands. I wouldn't pick it on the first pass, but I'd leave it since it suggests that the campaign had the intended impact on hand washing. After ruling out the rest, I'd select this.

(B) Out of scope. Since we don't know if the causes or cures for the common cold overlap with the flu, we can't say if this comparison tells us anything.

(C) Opposite. If anything, this suggests another reason for the lower incidence of the flu, which would weaken the argument.

(D) Opposite. If anything, this suggests another reason for the lower incidence of the flu. It wasn't the public health campaign; it was the media with their noted anti-fly bias. (It'd be important here to not equate the public health campaign with the media campaign.)

(E) Out of scope. How people feel has little to do with what they actually do, or whether they'll start to enact changes that minimize their risk of flu.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Strengthen and Weaken questions often have answers that seem out of scope, so be careful to only eliminate answer choices where you can clearly state why that answer doesn't align with the argument.

#officialexplanation

[xjiang.xj]

I chose C because I thought it added evidence that people heeded the campaign and avoided public places.

I didn't like A because it only said the illness can be controlled by frequent hand washing. This doesn't mean that the lower incidence during the 6 months resulted from frequent hand washing.

What is wrong with my process of thought? Any help would be much appreciated!

[ohthatpatrick]

Remember, you're doing Strengthen / Weaken .... no correct answers PROVE anything.

(A), as you said, definitely doesn't prove that hand washing was the reason, but it suggests that hand washing could be the reason.

I get what you're seeing in (C), but you would want (C) to say,
"Attendance at large public gatherings was lower than usual during the six-month period".

The QUANTITY of large public gatherings is not determined by the public. It's determined by event creators / planners / organizers.

ATTENDANCE at scheduled public gatherings could be a symptom of whether the public is avoiding public places.

Also, the health advice wasn't, "all people should try to avoid public gatherings",
it was "IF YOU HAVE FLU SYMPTOMS, avoid public places".

If people were following this campaign's advice, there would be just as many large public gatherings as before. The only thing the campaign is hoping to change is the number of sick people attending those gatherings.

So you would need a detail that's more specifically about "SICK people staying home".

[MJ]

I have chosen "B". My reason was that this choice strengthens the argument by eliminating another possibility. Since common cold has similar symptoms, if they have decreased within that 6 months, people might mistakenly attribute this decrease to influenza has decreased. Since incidence of the common cold stay the same, this possibility is eliminated.

[LawrenceR550]

Interesting question. There's nuance to the wording, on this one. I ended up choosing D, mistakenly thinking that our task was to establish a causal relation between good hand-washing habits and a reduced risk of influenza. After all, the author's evidence to support the conclusion that the public heeded the campaign is that there were less instances of influenza over the last 6 months, so that seemed to be where the missing link was, to me. Another thing that screwed me up was the wording, in how the public campaign sought to... sought to what?
To see if the public would heed their campaign! (NOT to see if washing hands may successfully reduce influenza, as though it were a scientific experiment).