PSA vs Principle question stems

shibaENU

Help. I'm kind of having a hard time distinguishing the difference between two question types' question stems. To me, they seem to have the same question stem except PSA question stems has word "justify?" and Principle questions don't have it? Am I right to use this approach? If not, how do you guys differentiate those two? Thank you so much in adnvace!

JMPlaw19

You have to look at all the context, usually principle questions are looking for you to apply the same logic that the stimulus uses and or just identify what logic the stimulus uses to reach its conclusion. PSA is basically a stengthen/sufficient assumption question, which wants you to have a strong answer that fills in a gap.

Jordan Johnson

Hi @Koonani95,

The word "principle" most often shows up in the stem of three separate question types: Strengthen, PSA, and Principle-Conform.

To identify a PSA, I generally look for terms like "justify" or "follows logically" in the stem. It will also often include the phrase "if true" and mention the conclusion specifically.

For Principle-Conform, I usually look for the terms like "illustrates" or "most closely conforms" in the stem.

Since the word "Principle" can also show in in Strengthen questions (and likely others, although I can't think of an example off of the top of my head), I would avoid using the term itself as the sole indicator of a question type.