#1 - Educators studied the performance of 200 students

[Haleyeastham]

Can you please explain to me how answer A is correct? Thanks!

[Robert Carroll]

Haley,

If answer choice (A) is true, then having a job or not having a job will have no effect on study time, since people are compensating for that lost time. However, a person who has an active social life will not compensate for that loss of study time, while a person without an active social life doesn't have anything to compensate for, and thus has more study time. So the first group will always devote more time to study than the second, explaining why their performance was better.

Robert Carroll

[KG!]

Hi I can see why A is correct, however, I don't see why E is incorrect. My reasoning was that the more social student didn't have a chance to study as much which is explicitly what the answer choice states.

I guess the reason that this is incorrect is that "having a full time job" HAS to apply to both situations. So yes, a more social student can't study as much. That also means that a full time job would distract a student who makes high grades in the course. and this doesn't resolve the issue. Am I correct in my thinking?

Also, what type of question is this? Is this a strengthen or resolve the paradox? It is the latter correct? or is it like a hybrid situation. When I see "most helps" I automatically think strengthen but the answer choices showed that its trying to explain otherwise so its RTP right ?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi KG!

This is a Resolve the Paradox question. We're trying to explain the educators' findings, not strengthen them. Also, this stimulus is just a fact set, rather than an argument. Most Resolve the Paradox questions just have fact sets. Strengthen questions need to have arguments that you are strengthening. Always think about what the question stem means rather than just looking at key words. For example, "supports" could be used in a Strengthen or a Must Be True question. You need to look at the stimulus as a whole and really think about what it's asking you to do.

The paradox that we're being asked to resolve is about the differences between two groups of students. We have 1) the students who have full or part-time jobs and a very limited social life and 2) the students who have no jobs and a very active social life (both students take early morning history classes so this is not a difference between them). We need to explain why these two groups perform differently in their history classes. So basically we're trying to show why having a job and no social life would cause students to perform better than having a social life and no job.

Answer choice (A) explains this difference by saying that the students with jobs make up for study time lost to their jobs but the students with social lives do not make up time lost due to their social lives.

Answer choice (E) doesn't explain the difference in performance between the students with jobs and the students with social lives. In fact, it makes the situation even more puzzling by telling us that having a full-time job can be just as distracting as having an active social life. If that's true, then why would the students with full-time jobs be performing better than the students with active social lives?

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey