Loading...
Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.
The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist's reasoning?
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. |
|
| Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district. |
|
The activist starts with a recommendation (block SaveAll) and then supports it with historical evidence from other towns. The argument moves from a specific action Morganville should take to the general pattern that justifies this action.
Morganville should prevent SaveAll from opening a store on the outskirts of town to keep its downtown shopping district healthy.
This is a causal argument based on historical precedent. The evidence (what happened in other towns) supports the conclusion (what Morganville should do) through the assumption that Morganville will experience the same pattern as other small towns.
Evaluate - We need to find information that would help us judge whether the activist's reasoning is sound. This means looking for assumptions the activist is making that we could test.
The activist claims a specific causal relationship: SaveAll opening → 25%+ downtown store bankruptcies within 5 years. The claim is precise about quantity (more than quarter), timing (within 5 years), and scope (small towns).
For evaluate questions, we need to identify the key assumptions in the activist's reasoning, then think of scenarios that would either strengthen or weaken the conclusion when taken to extremes. The activist assumes that what happened in other small towns will happen in Morganville, so we need to think about what could make this analogy stronger or weaker.
This choice asks whether activists in other towns successfully campaigned against SaveAll stores. While this might be interesting background information, it doesn't help us evaluate whether the activist's reasoning about SaveAll causing bankruptcies is actually correct. The success or failure of other campaigns tells us nothing about whether SaveAll truly harms downtown districts or whether Morganville should be concerned.
This choice asks what percentage of Morganville residents currently shop locally. This information might be relevant to understanding Morganville's current situation, but it doesn't help us evaluate the core claim that SaveAll will cause downtown store bankruptcies. Whether residents currently shop locally or not doesn't tell us whether SaveAll's arrival will change shopping patterns enough to cause the predicted bankruptcies.
This is the key question we need answered. The activist claims that \(\mathrm{25\%+}\) bankruptcy rates in downtown districts prove SaveAll is harmful, but we don't know if this rate is actually unusual. If healthy shopping districts typically see \(\mathrm{25\%}\) or more bankruptcies over five years due to normal business turnover, economic cycles, or other factors, then SaveAll might not be the real culprit. Conversely, if healthy districts normally see much lower bankruptcy rates (say, \(\mathrm{5-10\%}\)), then the \(\mathrm{25\%+}\) rate associated with SaveAll clearly indicates a problem. This baseline comparison is essential for evaluating whether the activist's evidence actually supports the conclusion.
This choice asks about the proportion of SaveAll employees drawn from Morganville. This information relates to employment effects but doesn't help evaluate the argument about downtown store bankruptcies. Even if SaveAll hired many local residents, this wouldn't change whether SaveAll causes the bankruptcy problem the activist is concerned about.
This choice asks whether SaveAll stores lose money in their first five years. The financial performance of SaveAll itself is irrelevant to evaluating whether SaveAll causes bankruptcies in downtown shopping districts. SaveAll could be profitable while still harming local businesses, or could lose money while having minimal impact on downtown stores.