medium · GRE Verbal
Researchers studying reading program observed that participants improved more than nonparticipants. They concluded that the program caused the gain. The result is suggestive, but participants volunteered and began with greater motivation; unless that possibility is addressed, the causal claim remains provisional. Which choice most accurately identifies the weakness in the researchers’ reasoning?
- It treats a before-and-after association as causal without ruling out a simultaneous change.
- It cites an observation relevant to the issue and therefore proves that the intervention can never work under any conditions.
- It assumes without evidence that every participant responded identically to both the intervention and the simultaneous change.
- It relies entirely on a sample that the passage explicitly describes as too small for any statistical analysis.
- It confuses the definition of the intervention with an empirical prediction while never defining the disputed term.
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