Investigating a Community Issue Without Overstepping
A student's external assessment investigation examines why a local youth centre's attendance fell from 120 to 45 weekly visits over 18 months. She has interviewed the centre coordinator, two volunteers, and five young people, and has accessed internal attendance records with the coordinator's permission. Her draft concludes that the centre's new 'structured programs only' policy caused the decline, citing volunteer comments. The coordinator, who introduced the policy, has read the draft and disputes the conclusion, noting that a bus route was cut and a new rival centre opened in the same period. The student must finalise the report and is unsure whether to soften her conclusion, add the coordinator's objections, or defend her original finding.
1. Assess the strength of the student's causal claim and identify the reasoning errors in her draft.
Read the worked answer
The causal claim is overstated. The draft commits several errors:
- Single-cause fallacy: attendance decline is attributed to one policy when at least three plausible causes are documented - the policy, the bus route cut, and the new rival centre. The student has not ruled out or weighed the alternatives.
- Confirmation bias in evidence use: volunteer comments are cited because they support the conclusion, but volunteers may share the student's view; the coordinator's counter-evidence is not engaged.
- Correlation treated as causation: attendance fell after the policy, but also after the transport and competition changes. Temporal sequence alone cannot separate them.
- Source imbalance: five young people and two volunteers is a small, possibly unrepresentative sample; the coordinator's institutional knowledge is a relevant source being excluded.
A defensible conclusion would say the policy is one plausible contributor among several, and specify what evidence would distinguish them.
2. Recommend how the student should revise the report to be defensible and to meet the criteria for evidence use.
Read the worked answer
Revise the conclusion, not just the wording.
- Restate the finding as multi-causal: the decline is consistent with the combined effect of the structured-programs policy, the loss of the bus route, and new competition. Present each with its supporting evidence.
- Integrate the coordinator's objections as evidence, not as an obstacle. Her account of the transport and competition changes is a legitimate source; report it and weigh it against the volunteer comments.
- Distinguish evidence types: attendance records show what happened; interviews offer interpretations of why. Say so, and avoid treating interpretation as proof.
- Acknowledge limits: small sample, no data from young people who stopped attending (a critical gap - they are the ones who left), and no access to transport or competitor data.
- State what would strengthen the finding: surveying lapsed attendees, or comparing attendance before and after the bus route change.
This is defensible because it reports the dispute transparently, weighs competing explanations, and does not claim more than the evidence supports - which is what the criteria reward over a tidy but unsupported conclusion.