The following appeared on the Website Science News Today.
"In a recent survey of more than 5,000 adolescents, the teens who reported eating the most meals with their families were the least likely to use illegal drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Family meals were also associated with higher grades, better self-esteem, and lower rates of depression. Almost 30 percent of the teens said they ate at least seven meals per week with their families. Clearly, having a high number of family meals keeps teens from engaging in bad behaviors."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The author of the article concluded that teens do not involve in bad behaviors if they have more meals with their family. He based his conclusion to some assumption that are mentioned. However, In my opinion, for his conclusion to be justified, answers for these three questions are needed. Otherwise, this argument does not hold good.
At first, does these 5000 teens carry image of all the teens around the country? With this population, these teens do not even represent the number of teens within two cities. And we do not even know if these teens are from same place or the survey is conducted among teens of different places. Maybe all these teens are from same place where the family rules, school rules and the city rules are so strict that they cannot even think of doing any drugs and alcohol. Or, maybe only the "good" teens participated in the survey and one who are involved in bad behavior did not even bothered to do the survey. If these are the cases, then the argument is seriously flawed.
Secondly, the argument solely based on the words of the teens. No person involved in drugs is going to admit it. Maybe the survey was conducted in the presence of the parents and the teen were afraid to report their involvement in bad habits. Even without the presence of parents, the teens might be reporting false in the survey in order to show their "good" persona. Teens are mostly truthful to only to their peers and most of the time like to not socialize with others and fake their real personality while encountering other people. Also, teens might be thinking the survey as fun and due to peer pressure, filling up random stuffs. The argument will not hold water if these doubts are true.
Finally, the author is implying that teens with good grades, better self-esteem and lower rate of depression might not take any drugs and alcohol. The kids might be studying hard and maintaining their good behavior while taking the drugs on their spare time. Or, these teens might be taking tuition classes to improve their grades and because of more pressure of the study and getting good grades, they are secretly smoking to feel better. Also, these kids might be enjoying the bad habits and having fun in it that they have no reason to be depressed. These negative works might be their way to cope with depression, thus not having the problem but gone severely deep into the drugs issue. These cases is going to weaken the argument badly if found to be true.
So, For the validity of this argument, these doubts needs to be answered by the author. Only if these holes are filled and the flaws are corrected, if true, then the argument can be considered and be confidently assumed for other teens of the city or country or the world.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 487 350
No. of Characters: 2199 1500
No. of Different Words: 225 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.698 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.515 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.147 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 79 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.48 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.355 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.68 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.29 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.29 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.103 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 590, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'did' requires base form of the verb: 'bother'
Suggestion: bother
...e involved in bad behavior did not even bothered to do the survey. If these are the case...
^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 703, Rule ID: AGREEMENT_SENT_START[4]
Message: You should probably use: 'are'.
Suggestion: are
... deep into the drugs issue. These cases is going to weaken the argument badly if f...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, while, in my opinion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2281.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 487.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 4.68377823409 5.12650576532 91% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69766713281 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.35057425546 2.78398813304 84% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.476386036961 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 702.0 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 41.6151126395 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.24 119.503703932 76% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.48 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.96 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.161366502302 0.218282227539 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0481133259187 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0465671242367 0.0701772020484 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0893458596414 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0506948270536 0.0628817314937 81% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.4 14.3799401198 72% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 69.11 48.3550499002 143% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.3 12.197005988 68% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 9.86 12.5979740519 78% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.63 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.0 12.3882235529 48% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.