Examkin

Soru

Zorluk: Çok zorCausal Flaws and Confounding Variables

Consider the following argument:

A five-year municipal study compared thirty industrial cities that enacted regulations requiring commercial buildings to install vegetation-covered green roofs against thirty comparable cities without such mandates. The cities with mandated green roofs recorded a 25 percent reduction in emergency room admissions for heat-stroke and heat-stress illnesses during summer heatwaves. Researchers concluded that the microclimate cooling produced by green-roof vegetation was directly responsible for mitigating extreme urban heat and reducing heat-related hospitalizations.

Evaluate the following statement:
In the argument above, the fact that all thirty green-roof cities simultaneously modernized their municipal power grids—preventing summer blackouts and allowing residential air conditioning units to operate without interruption—functions as a confounding variable that weakens the researchers' causal conclusion.

Cevap: Cevap

Cevap

The statement is True. The concurrent electrical grid modernization introduces an alternative explanation for the reduced hospitalizations, thereby functioning as a confounding variable that undermines the causal attribution to green roofs.
The evaluated statement accurately identifies a classic confounding variable. In causal evaluation, when an extraneous event coincides perfectly with the proposed cause and provides an alternative pathway to the observed effect, the argument commits a causal flaw by failing to rule out alternative explanations.

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Deconstruct the core argument in the passage.
Premise: Green-roof cities experienced a 25% drop in heat-stress admissions relative to non-green-roof cities. Conclusion: Green-roof vegetation directly caused the reduction in heat-stress admissions.
Isolating the explicit causal link (Cause: Green roofs -> Effect: Reduced admissions) is required before evaluating potential flaws.
2
Analyze the impact of the additional factor described in the statement.
Power grid modernization prevented outages, ensuring continuous operation of residential air conditioning during extreme heat.
Air conditioning directly protects individuals from environmental heat stress, providing an independent mechanism for lowering hospital admissions.
3
Determine if this factor constitutes a confounding variable.
Because grid modernization occurred exclusively and uniformly alongside the green-roof mandates in the observed cities, the study cannot separate the cooling effect of vegetation from the cooling effect of air conditioning.
When a third variable systematically co-occurs with the tested cause and provides an alternative explanation for the effect, it acts as a confounding variable that invalidates the causal claim.

Anahtar Kavram

Causal Flaws and Confounding Variables
Bu soruyu puanla

Konular

Causal Flaws and Confounding Variables

Bu konudan daha fazla soru