LSAT 5 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q2

LR Question 2 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Several studies have shown that hospitals are not all…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: The difference in hospital outcomes must be due to the quality of care provided by staff.

REASONING: The hospitals studied had equal per patient funding.

ANALYSIS: The argument doesn’t actually give us any reason why staff are necessarily to blame. Per patient funding is one of millions of variables that affect hospital outcomes. Staff are an important element, but so is the quality of the building, the health of the surrounding population, randomness, the hospital administration, etc.

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1. Advanced degrees are meaningless on their own. Also, “some” could be 3 out of 1000 hospitals. Lastly, we don’t know if those hospitals have better or worse outcomes.
2. CORRECT. A sicker population will likely do worse in hospital, even if the staff are just as good.
3. Is there any relation between years worked and patient health outcomes? This doesn’t say.
4. This supports the argument by showing that the necessary care was similar in all of the hospitals.
5. This shows that there aren’t massive regional differences skewing the results of the study. This supports the argument.

Recap: The question begins with “Several studies have shown that hospitals are not all”. It is a Weaken question. Learn more about LSAT Weaken questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.