Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
Executive: Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of their jobs. On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits." Therefore, the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits.
The executive's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| Our company recently sent employees a survey asking them to numerically rate their satisfaction levels with different aspects of their jobs. |
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| On average, the employees gave lower satisfaction ratings in the category of "Skills Training" than in the category of "Wages and Benefits." |
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| Therefore, the company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits. |
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Argument Flow:
The executive starts with survey data showing lower satisfaction ratings for skills training compared to wages and benefits, then jumps to the conclusion that improving skills training will have a bigger impact on overall satisfaction than improving wages and benefits.
Main Conclusion:
The company can improve overall employee satisfaction more by improving skills training than by increasing wages and benefits.
Logical Structure:
The argument assumes that lower satisfaction scores automatically mean greater potential for improvement in overall satisfaction. However, this logic has a major gap - just because something scores lower doesn't mean fixing it will have the biggest impact on overall satisfaction. The executive doesn't consider factors like how much each area could realistically be improved, how important each area is to employees, or whether there might be a ceiling effect where wages and benefits are already at a satisfactory level.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Misc. - This is a flaw/vulnerable to criticism question asking us to identify the weakest point in the executive's reasoning
Precision of Claims
The executive makes a specific claim about which improvement strategy (skills training vs wages/benefits) will have a greater impact on overall employee satisfaction based on survey rating differences
Strategy
We need to identify logical gaps or flawed assumptions in how the executive connects the survey data to their business recommendation. Look for ways the reasoning could fail even if the survey facts are true
This hits the core flaw perfectly. The executive assumes that because Skills Training scored lower, improving it will have a bigger impact on overall satisfaction. But what if employees simply don't care that much about skills training compared to wages and benefits? If wages and benefits are far more important to employee satisfaction, then even a small improvement there could outweigh a large improvement in skills training. The executive never considers the relative importance of these categories to employees.
This choice suggests the flaw is ignoring other low-scoring categories. However, the executive's argument specifically compares skills training vs wages and benefits - it's not about finding the absolute lowest scoring category. The existence of other low-scoring areas doesn't invalidate the comparison between these two specific categories, so this isn't the main logical weakness.
Individual variation from averages is a statistical concern, but it doesn't undermine the executive's core logic. If we accept that averages are reasonable representations of employee sentiment, then individual differences don't fundamentally challenge whether improving the lower-scoring category will have more impact than improving the higher-scoring one.
Different interpretations of rating scales could affect data quality, but this is more about survey methodology than logical reasoning. Even if everyone interpreted the scale consistently, the executive's argument would still have the same fundamental flaw about connecting lower scores to greater improvement potential.
Non-response bias could skew results, but again this is a data collection issue rather than a logical reasoning flaw. The executive's argument structure would remain problematic even with perfect survey participation - the core issue is the assumption about how satisfaction improvements translate to overall employee satisfaction.