Question Bank / Reading and Writing / Inferences
Inferences SAT question
Reading and Writing · Information and Ideas · Hard · Answer it here, explanation included.
One challenge when researching whether holding elected office changes a person’s behavior is the problem of ensuring that the experiment has an appropriate control group. To reveal the effect of holding office, researchers must compare people who hold elected office with people who do not hold office but who are otherwise similar to the office-holders. Since researchers are unable to control which politicians win elections, they therefore blank
Which choice most logically completes the text?
ExplanationShow
Choice D is the best answer because it presents the conclusion that most logically follows from the text’s discussion of the challenge researchers face when studying the effects of holding elected office on a person’s behavior. The text explains that it’s hard for researchers to test for the effects that elected office has on people because finding people to serve as a control group is difficult. The text indicates that a control group needs to be made up of people who share characteristics of the group being tested but don’t have the variable being tested (in this case, holding elected office). Because researchers aren’t able to influence who wins elections, they’re also unable to determine who would serve as an appropriately similar member of a control group. Thus, it logically follows that researchers will find it difficult to identify a group of people who can function as an appropriate control group for their studies.
Choice A is incorrect because the text focuses on the struggle to put together a control group for experiments; it doesn’t suggest that finding information about politicians’ behavior is difficult. Choice B is incorrect because the experiments mentioned in the text are testing the effects of holding elected office on a person’s behavior. Studying people who have already held elected office wouldn’t provide an opportunity to note any behavioral changes that the position might cause. Choice C is incorrect because the text defines people in a control group as those “who are otherwise similar to the office-holders”; selecting people who differ from the office-holders wouldn’t fit the criteria for an appropriate control group.
Drill this skill on Aceit
Adaptive practice, a daily plan, and score tracking take a free account so we can save your work.
More Inferences questions
- Marta Coll and colleagues' 2010 Mediterranean Sea biodiversity census reported approximately 17,000 species, nearly double the number reported in Carlo Bianchi and Carla Morri's 20
- In her 2021 article "Throwaway History: Towards a Historiography of Ephemera," scholar Anne Garner discusses John Johnson (1882–1956), a devoted collector of items intended to be d
- Researchers recently found that disruptions to an enjoyable experience, like a short series of advertisements during a television show, often increase viewers' reported enjoyment.
- Many of William Shakespeare's tragedies address broad themes that still appeal to today's audiences. For instance, Romeo and Juliet, which is set in the Italy of Shakespeare's time
- In the early nineteenth century, some Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States used agricultural techniques developed by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people centurie
- Some businesses believe that when employees are interrupted while doing their work, they experience a decrease in energy and productivity. However, a team led by Harshad Puranik, w