Logical Reasoning

PT1 · S3 · Q23 A medical journal used a questionnaire

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A medical journal used a questionnaire survey to determine whether a particular change in its format would increase its readership.

Goal

Increase readership of the medical journal.

Plan

Do the change that 62% of the respondents in the survey supported.

Evaluate

The question stem makes it sound like we're dealing with a Plan / Goal, because "desired effect" sounds like Goal.

So we can think through our common evaluations of Plans: - is it feasible? - will people cooperate as expected? - could it backfire? - does it address the root issue?

But in this case, we have no idea what the plan even is. It's simply "a particular change". So there's no great way to scrutinize it according to our usual questions.

62% of respondents said they would support this change, but how does that translate into increased readership?

Are these survey respondents already readers of the journal? If so, their approval doesn't really matter.

If they aren't yet readers, then we'd want to know whether this proposed change would be motivating enough that they (or people like them) would become a reader of the medical journal. You might respond in a survey that you'd approve of a certain change but that change still wouldn't be compelling enough to start reading a new journal.

Goal

To strengthen this argument, we want to know that the survey respondents are not already readers of the journal and that their approval of this proposed change could be compelling enough to make them become readers.

23.

Which one of the following, if it were determined to be true, would provide the best evidence that the journal’s decision will have the desired effect?

  1. Of the readers who received

    No Impact

    A 90% return rate is a very high response rate for a survey, but doesn't send any clear signal about why it's so high. We still don't know who is responding (current readers or non-readers) and don't know whether a non-reader would care enough about this change to start reading.

    25% picked this

  2. Other journals have based format

    No Impact

    At a minimum, we'd need to know whether other journals who made decisions based on surveys benefited from doing so. This just tells us that others have taken a similar action, but we have no idea whether that similar action led to success or failure of achieving a desired effect.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    The percentage of surveyed readers

    Why this is right

    This starts by clarifying that the survey went out to readers, but reassures us that the potential readers would feel the same way. This of course doesn't prove the plan will work, because "supporting a change" doesn't mean "becoming a reader". But we at least feel better than before, knowing that a majority of non-readers would support this change. That makes it more plausible that enacting this change could lead to increased readership.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    64% picked this

  4. It was determined that the

    No Impact

    Cost reduction is irrelevant to readership. The conclusion is about whether readership will increase, not whether costs go down.

    1% picked this

  5. Ninety percent of the readers

    Opposite

    This actually undermines the survey's reliability. If 90% of dissatisfied readers but only 50% of satisfied readers returned the survey, the responding sample is heavily skewed toward dissatisfied readers — meaning the 62% pro-change figure overrepresents the dissatisfied side. This is showing a way that the plan might backfire. The people who like the current format didn't participate as much in the survey, and if the journal changes its format to something different, those readers might get annoyed (and perhaps readership would even be decreased).

    9% picked this

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