Critical Reasoning

Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist’s reasoning?

A. Have community activists in other towns successfully campaigned against the opening of a SaveAll store on the outskirts of their towns?
B. Do a large percentage of the residents of Morganville currently do almost all of their shopping at stores in Morganville?
C. In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period?
D. What proportion of the employees at the SaveAll store on the outskirts of Morganville will be drawn form Morganville?
E. Do newly opened SaveAll stores ever lose money during their first five years of operation?

OA is C, logic plzz

Again, I'm having such a feeling of deja-vu.... Please share the source for this one as well...

The answer is C because finding out the percentage of normal store bankruptcies is essential to the argument. If during a typical 5-year period more than 25% of stores close, then one can safely assume that this is a normal, regular process that takes place in such cities.

Other reasons to eliminate the rest:

A. campaigning has nothing to do with the actual bankruptcy issue. The argument concerns store closings BECAUSE of a major brand, not activism
B. while this would be a good question to consider when conducting a market study for SaveAll, it's not really useful when trying to establish whether or not the new store would have an impact on the central shopping district.
D. employment issues are irrelevant here
E. performance of the new store is the "business" of the retailer and does not count towards determining the impact of the department store

I agree with answer choice C. Answer choice A is out of scope, because the answer to this question doesn't address the community activist's reasoning. Answer choice B is irrelevant as well; answering yes or no to this question doesn't evaluate the activist's reasoning. Choice D is irrelevant as well; this percentage doesn't matter, since we are concerned about the companies in the area. Choice E is entirely out of scope.

I saw a similar question in Manhattan and the answer was (D), weird...

A Success of activists is irrelevant.
B There are so many potential variables that this doesn't necessarily tell us all that much.
D Irrelevant.
E Irrelevant.

ANSWER: C If the five-year bankruptcy rate for towns with healthy central shopping districts is 25-percent of higher, regardless of SaveAll's presence or absence, then it's hard to blame the bankruptcy rate on the department store chain.

Coming up with clear answer to each questions leads to very clear conclusion that it is C. All others seem irrelevant.

C seems to be the best choice here