Quick Reference 5: Answer Strength and Scope

Reference 5: Answer Strength and Scope

The last inch between two close answers is almost always the same inch: one choice stays exactly where the evidence stops, and the other takes one more step the evidence never licensed. This page exists to protect that inch.

Evidence allows	Answer goes too far
may explain	explains
supports	proves
is associated with	causes
one explanation	the explanation
some, several	most, all
observed in this sample	true in the population generally
not demonstrated	impossible
not found	does not exist (not found does not by itself establish absence)
primarily	only
could	will

Choose the strongest answer the evidence actually earns, not the strongest answer that sounds plausible read aloud.

Association and Causation

A city tracked emergency room visits and daily pollen counts over one spring and found that visits rose on high-pollen days. A report states that pollen exposure is associated with more emergency visits during that period. A choice claiming pollen exposure causes the increase in visits goes one step past what a single season of co-occurring counts can establish; something else moving with pollen season, heat, humidity, other allergens, could be doing some or all of the work.

Proposed and Demonstrated Mechanisms

Researchers studying a moth species notice that individuals raised at higher temperatures develop darker wing coloration, and propose that heat exposure may trigger a pigment-producing pathway already known in related insects. A choice stating that heat triggers this pathway in the studied moths treats a reasonable, still-untested proposal as a settled mechanism. The researchers’ own word, may, is doing real work in that sentence, and an answer choice has to preserve it.

Sample Size and Population Scope

A survey of forty patients at a single clinic finds that most who tried a new therapy reported reduced symptoms within six weeks. A choice stating what the therapy does in this sample stays inside the study. A choice claiming the therapy works for patients generally extends forty people at one clinic into a population the study was never built to represent.

Evidence of Absence

No surviving text describes how a particular medieval workshop mixed its pigments, and no later account claims the technique was ever written down. A choice stating that the method was not recorded matches what the historical record actually shows. A choice claiming the method never existed treats a gap in survival as though it were evidence the thing itself never happened, which a missing record can never establish on its own.

The check is the same every time: name the exact word carrying the weight, and ask whether the passage actually gave that word permission to be there.