Critical reasoning

[SaurabhC801]

I still feel E is the right answer rather than A. This is an "Except" question. So 4 of the answers might account for the free-day-care plan's lack of success, and 1 might not.

Option (B) - Parents declined use of day care. Clearly, it accounts for the free day care plan's failure.
Option (C) - Day care is noisy, hot, and uncomfortable. So maybe parents declined use of day care. It accounts for the free day care plan's failure.
Option (A) - Many parents employ nannies. So those parents did not use day care. So, this also clearly accounts for the plan's failure.
Option (D) - Flu season might result in more sickness, maybe severe sickness. Parents may want to keep sick children at home rather than at a daycare. So again, it accounts for the plan's failure.
Option (E) - Increase in employees neither necessarily indicate increase in participation, nor lack of participation in the plan. No information is given to make any call here.

Also note that the question is NOT to account for the increase in no. of employees calling in sick, so inferring that "increase in employee count might have increased the no. of people calling sick" is irrelevant. Instead, the question is to account for the lack of success of the day care's plan. The day care's plan was to reduce the no. of employees calling in sick (2nd sentence of the argument). Option (A), (B) and (C) indicates lack of participation in the plan, resulting in non-reduction of employees calling in sick. Option (D) indicates possibility of increasing it. Option (E) is the only option that doesn't carry sufficient information to draw any inference.

The conclusion is around implementation of free day care plan causing the reduction. People who were using nanny services before the program may have continued using their service. So the daycare program did not change their existing routine, and hence indicates lack of success of the day care plan. So (A) cannot be the correct answer.

Please share your thoughts!!

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Your logic is good, except for the comments you make about answers A and E. The weakness in your approach is that you're not clear what would constitute success of the free day-care plan. Sure, the company want parents to use the free day-care, but why? The answer is: in order to reduce the number of sick days that parents take to look after their sick children.

So, for answer A, we don't care about the parents who employ nannies, as they weren't taking sick days off in the first place. And, for answer E, a higher number of employees means more sick days taken off, ceteris paribus.

[DmitriK910]

An internal survey revealed that some employees at Company Y had called in sick in order to take care of a sick child. The company's CEO instituted free on-site day care in hopes of reducing the number of employees engaging in this practice. However, the number of employees who called in sick to care for a sick child was actually higher in the sixth month of the on-site day-care program than it had been the month before the program was instituted.


I do understand why A is irrelevant and correct. But could someone explain why D is incorrect?

I use following logic for D: according to the passage the goal of the free on-site day care is to reduce the number of employees engaging in taking sick day. Reduce means fewer number of employees who taking sick days per certain period. In answer D, if the 6th month is at the height of flu season, than accordingly the number of both employees taking sick days and employees using day care increase compare to the basis period disregarding of success or faillure of the program. It makes 6th month incomparable with the month before program was instituted and therefore we cannot draw any conclusion from that regarding success or failure of the plan. It makes the answer D irrelvant to evaualtion of a plan success.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

For Critical Reasoning problems (and RC ones too), it's important to 'match up' terms in different parts of the problem. The question mentions the 'apparent lack of success' of the program. We can match this with the CEO's 'hopes of reducing' the number of employees taking sick days to care for a sick child. A flu outbreak would lead one to expect more sick children, and therefore more days that employees take off to care for their children.

You're right that it's not a fair evaluation of the program (i.e. the program might be a good one), but that's taken care of by the phrase 'apparent lack of success'.

[DmitriK910]

Thanks!

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]