A survey is conducted by a Dean of a university, the goal of which is to find out whether or not cheating correlates to a student’s grade point average.
A survey is conducted anonymously and students are to submit their grade point average and the amounts in which they have cheated.
These figures are then displayed on a graph and conveniently the graph displays that whereas we may have thought that cheating would result in a higher grade point average it actually results in a lower one.
The displayed graph is actually just a cross section we are lead to believe adequately depicts the findings but considering that the survey is anonymous and the dean of a university has a vested interest in his/her students refraining from cheating it seems convenient that it shows that increased cheating results in a lower grade point average.
Surely common sense dictates the opposite to be true, that cheating in fact improves your grade point average. What would be the point in cheating if it didn’t improve your grade and in fact did the exact opposite?
The graph is almost entirely coherent, there are no anomalous results whatsoever and considering this is just a cross section and the survey is anonymous what’s to say that these are accurate, why would anyone admit to cheating and then display their grades anonymously or otherwise? Just to support the hypothesis that cheating results in lower grades seems unlikely.
It could be the scenario that these people cheat because they struggle to succeed without nefarious means, so they cheat in order to just scrape by.
Although in the actual case study a causal hypothesis is not actually stated the nature of the research and who has conducted the research suggests that they are in fact trying to create a causal link between cheating and low grades.
One of many flaws in this argument is that although the study is about the affect of cheating on grades, the quality of the grades could have nothing to do with cheating it could just be a coincidence. There are numerous factors imposing on someone’s grade point average and until you have eliminated them all you can’t be sure of a direct link between cheating and low grades.
This is of course an inductive argument, someone is trying to make you believe a cause and effect relationship in their conclusion i.e. cheating results in low grades, which is not properly supported by the figures they have produced and the reliability of the sources are of course suspect.
This could also be an example of syllogism as the researcher wants you to believe that because these people have cheated and their results have been poor that in fact if you were to copy them your results too would be poor. So because the researcher is trying to solicit a response from people reading the study, this weakens his/her argument.
The argument is not that strong as it stands as the target population was 2000 and only 600 people actually answered the survey, so to assume that cheating leads to a poor grade point average when you have less than half of the required data is pathetic and it proves nothing.
A generalisation between cheating and grades cannot be established if all or at least more than half the population of the study are represented.
This is a biased generalisation the sample is large and a large sample is most certainly required for this argument but not large enough to adequately paint a picture of the target population, thus resulting in an overestimation in the strength of the argument.
Moore. Parker. (2012) Critical Thinking. Retrieved from
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0078038286/student_view0/chapter10/chapter_overview.html
Moore. Parker. (2012) Critical Thinking. Retrieved from
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0078038286/student_view0/chapter11/chapter_overview.html
