Dr. Godfrey's conclusion is: "working long hours at part time jobs during the school year contributes to the academic problems that many of our high school students experience."
Why? We are told that students who work more than 15 hours per week show less interest in school and get lower grades than those who do not work as many hours at part time jobs.
Dr. Nash's conclusion is: "That's not so."
Why? Many of our high school students set out to earn as much money as they can in order to compensate for their lack of academic success.
So, Dr. Nash is saying that it is not that working the part time hours is causing less academic success, but--in fact--those who have less academic success are seeking out to work part time hours.
Thus, it would be most helpful to know whether those who work a lot of part time hours and have academic problems have had those problems before they worked that many hours or if the academic problems occurred after they began to work; that way, it'll be easier to determine what the reason for poor academic success is.
Answer choice (C) says just this: "whether the students who work more than 15 hours per week and have academic problems had such problems before they began to work that many hours."
Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
