Two years ago, radio station WCQP in Rockville decided to increase the number of call-in advice programs that it broadcast; since that time, its share of the radio audience in the Rockville listening area has increased significantly. Given WCQP's recent success with call-in advice programming, and citing a nationwide survey indicating that many radio listeners are quite interested in such programs, the station manager of KICK in Medway recommends that KICK include more call-in advice programs in an attempt to gain a larger audience share in its listening area.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The manager of KICK radio station suggests increasing the call-in advice programme in order to gain more audience share in Medway based on the success story of another radio station WCQP and a nationwide survey indicating the growing interest in such programmes. However, the recommendation is made according to dubious assumptions which require further examination.
First of all, KICK and WCQP are located in different areas with different target audiences, so it is premature to claim that the success of WCQP through increasing call-in advice programmes can be directly copied in KICK. For example, what if most of the audiences of WCQP are elders, while the majority of KICK audiences are the younger generation? In this highly possible scenario, the direct copy of WCQP programme strategy will never lead to success, but discourage the audiences of KICK due to dissimilar programme preferences. Therefore, questions about the target audiences’ types and preferences of KICK are critical before considering applying the programme policy of WCQP.
Likewise, the recommendation is also inferred with the evidence of the nationwide survey. However, the information of the survey is too limited to acquire its validity and credibility. It is not rare to see incorrect conclusions drawn through surveys with poor quality. Therefore, before any recommendation is made, it is imperative to understand how the nationwide survey was conducted. Only when the techniques, such as the methodology, the period and the source etc., applied on the survey are appropriate and convincing, can we confidently leverage it as a core evidence to support the recommendation.
Last, even though the quality of the nationwide survey is proved, it is questionable to claim the conclusion that it is effective to increase the audience of KICK by providing more call-in advice programmes. The reason is that it is unknown how similar the target audiences of KICK and the nationwide survey are. Again, it is highly possible that the specific listening needs of KICK audiences are not captured in the nationwide survey since the latter focuses a much wider range of audiences and vice versa. Therefore, applying the survey directly may lead to an unexpected outcome because the real needs of KICK audiences are not fulfilled.
In conclusion, the recommendation requires more clarification on the target audiences’ differences among KICK, WCQP and the nationwide survey. Also, more information about how the survey was conducted is essential to build the validity to leverage it as the base for the recommendation.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 2136 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.248 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.978 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 74 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.941 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.928 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.609 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.135 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...applying the programme policy of WCQP. Likewise, the recommendation is also inf...
^^^
Line 5, column 607, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...evidence to support the recommendation. Last, even though the quality of the nat...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, likewise, may, so, therefore, while, for example, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2201.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 407.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.40786240786 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49157444576 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.09322069941 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481572481572 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 700.2 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.9456063663 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.470588235 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.9411764706 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.88235294118 5.70786347227 121% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.169878245065 0.218282227539 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0571523404517 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0675360807432 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105375792671 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0754413569363 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.81 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.