天山 9-18

cdvitamin

The growing popularity of computer-based activities was widely expected to result in a decline in television viewing, since it had been assumed that people lack sufficient free time to maintain current television-viewing levels while spending increasing amounts of free time on the computer. That assumption, however, is evidently false: in a recent mail survey concerning media use, a very large majority of respondents who report increasing time spent per week using computer report no change in time spent watching television.

 

Which of the following would be most useful to determine in order to evaluate the argument?

 

1. Whether a large majority of the survey respondents reported watching television regularly

2. Whether the amount of time spent watching television is declining among people who report that they rarely or never use computers

3. Whether the type of television programs a person watches tends to changes as the amount of time spent per week using computer increases

4. Whether a large majority of the computer owners in the survey reported spending increasing amounts of time per week using computers

5. Whether the survey respondents’ reports of time spent using computers included time spent using computers at work.

The answer is E. Can anybody help explain a little bit? Thanks!

iceage_spring

I think the key word here is "free time", if the increased time spent on computer happens during the work hours, then people should still have the same amount of free time (after work) to watch TV. If the survey were to ask people about their free time usage of the computer and the TV viewing, then it can draw proper conlcusion about the relationship between the two activities. Hope this helps. Bests, iceage_spring

cdvitamin

Got it! Thanks a lot!

Moderators, please kindly help move this post to the Logic Board. Thanks!