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Difficulty: Very hardStatement and Conclusions or Inferences

Read the following statements and conclusions carefully and answer the question that follows.

Statements:
1. In a state administrative framework, civil service positions requiring specialized technical expertise registered an annual vacancy rate exceeding 35% due to compensation disparities with the private sector.
2. The administration recently decreed that any technical position remaining vacant for over two consecutive years shall be automatically abolished to optimize operational overhead.
3. Despite persistent vacancy rates and the automated abolishment of long-vacant posts, public service delivery metrics across technical departments recorded a 12% net improvement over the last fiscal year.

Conclusions:
I. The decision to abolish long-vacant technical positions directly caused the recorded improvement in public service delivery metrics.
II. A technical department can achieve improvements in its public service delivery metrics even when technical positions remain vacant for more than two years.

Which of the given conclusions logically follow(s) from the statements?

  1. A
    Only conclusion I follows
  2. Only conclusion II followsAnswer
  3. C
    Both conclusion I and conclusion II follow
  4. D
    Neither conclusion I nor conclusion II follows

Answer

Only conclusion II follows
Conclusion II logically follows because Statement 3 explicitly confirms a 12% improvement in public service delivery metrics in technical departments, even while Statement 1 and Statement 2 establish that technical positions experienced vacancies exceeding 35% and positions vacant for over two years were subject to automated abolishment. This demonstrates that such long-term vacancies do not render departments incapable of achieving metric improvements. Conversely, Conclusion I asserts a direct cause-and-effect relationship between post abolishment and metric improvement, which is nowhere stated or implied in the text.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate Conclusion I against the provided statements.
Conclusion I asserts a direct cause-and-effect link between post abolishment and service delivery improvement.
The statements note that post abolishment and metric improvements occurred within the same timeframe, but provide no evidence that one caused the other. Treating correlation as causation is a logical fallacy.
2
Evaluate Conclusion II against the provided statements.
Conclusion II states that a technical department can improve service delivery metrics despite having technical positions vacant for over two years.
Statement 1 establishes vacancies over 35%, Statement 2 notes positions vacant over two years are abolished, and Statement 3 explicitly confirms a 12% improvement in delivery metrics. This empirically demonstrates that having long-vacant positions does not preclude performance improvement.
3
Synthesize results to select the correct conclusion.
Only conclusion II logically and necessarily follows from the given premises.
Conclusion I relies on an unwarranted causal assumption, whereas Conclusion II is a valid deduction directly substantiated by the facts in Statement 3.

Key Concept

Distinguishing Necessary Logical Deductions from Unwarranted Causal Assumptions
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Topics

Statement and Conclusions or Inferences

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