LSAT 123 – Section 3 – Question 15

LSAT 123 - Section 3 - Question 15

June 2007

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT123 S3 Q15
+LR
Weaken +Weak
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Sampling +Smpl
A
9%
145
B
28%
147
C
59%
153
D
3%
146
E
1%
143
136
147
158
 +Medium 144.044 +SubsectionEasier

A consumer magazine surveyed people who had sought a psychologist’s help with a personal problem. Of those responding who had received treatment for 6 months or less, 20 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Of those responding who had received longer treatment, 36 percent claimed that treatment “made things a lot better.” Therefore, psychological treatment lasting more than 6 months is more effective than shorter-term treatment.

Summarize Argument
The author concludes that psychological treatment lasting more than 6 months is more effective than shorter-term treatment. She bases this on a magazine survey that shows a greater percentage of people report being very satisfied after 6+ months of treatment than those who had less than 6 months of treatment.

Notable Assumptions
In order for treatment lasting longer than 6 months to be “more effective,” the author must either believe that the treatment plans were treating similar psychological issues, or that the issues matter less than the plans. This means the author assumes that the length of a treatment plan matters more for success than the issue the treatment aims to solve. The also means the author assumes that the group who did more 6 months of treatment don’t significantly differ from the group that did less than 6 months.

A
Of the respondents who had received treatment for longer than 6 months, 10 percent said that treatment made things worse.
We would need a comparative aspect for this to work. We don’t know what percentage of the group who received short-term treatment responded the same way.
B
Patients who had received treatment for longer than 6 months were more likely to respond to the survey than were those who had received treatment for a shorter time.
Even if they were more likely to respond, we don’t know how that would change their answers. Nor do we know if the difference in sample size makes a difference.
C
Patients who feel they are doing well in treatment tend to remain in treatment, while those who are doing poorly tend to quit earlier.
This points out a key difference between the two groups of patients. It may not be that more than 6 months of treatment is more effective than short-term treatment plans, but that people who believe treatment is successful continue treatment beyond 6 months.
D
Patients who were dissatisfied with their treatment were more likely to feel a need to express their feelings about it and thus to return the survey.
We don’t know anything about people who were dissatisfied. We only know about people who think treatment helped “a lot.”
E
Many psychologists encourage their patients to receive treatment for longer than 6 months.
We don’t care what psychologists think their patients should do. We need to weaken the connection between the study and the author’s conclusion.

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LSAT PrepTest 123 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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