Educators studied the performance of 200 students in a university's history classes. They found that those students w...

Mehran on September 24, 2018

@joryjes what is the discrepancy here?

Students who performed best = part-time or full-time jobs, history classes in the morning and very limited social life.

Students who performed worst = no jobs, history classes in the morning and very active social life.

We are looking for a possible explanation for this discrepancy.

Since both these groups had history classes in the morning, that can't be the reason for this difference so we can rewrite as follows:

Students who performed best = part-time or full-time jobs + very limited social life.

Students who performed worst = no jobs + very active social life.

Let's take a look at (A), which states, "The students compensated for any study time lost due to their jobs but they did not compensate for any study time lost due to their social lives."

Is this a possible explanation? Yes!

(A) is a possible explanation as to why the students who did best had jobs but no social life (i.e., they compensated for any study time lost due to their jobs).

It is also a possible explanation as to why the students who did the worst had no jobs but very active social life (i.e., they did not compensate for study time lost due to their social lives).

So (A) would be the correct answer.

The problem with (D) is that it does not address the discrepancy here.

We do not care what percentage had part-time versus full-time jobs because the group that did the worst had no jobs so that can't explain this discrepancy.

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.