Critical Reasoning

The growing popularity of computer-based activities was widely expected to result in a decline in television viewing, since it had been assumed that people lack sufficient free time to maintain current television-viewing levels while spending increasing amounts of free time on the computer. That assumption, however, is evidently false: in a recent mail survey concerning media use, a very large majority of respondents who report increasing time spent per week using computers report no change in time spent watching television.

In order to evaluate the argument, it would be most useful to determine which of the following?
A Whether a large majority of the survey respondents reported watching television regularly
B Whether the amount of time spent watching television is declining among people who report that they rarely or never use computers
C Whether the type of television programs a person watches tends to change as the amount of time spent per week using computers increases
D Whether a large majority of the computer owners in the survey reported spending increasing amounts of time per week using computers
E Whether the survey respondents' reports of time spent using computers included time spent using computers at work
The OA is E. I can understand the correct answer but I think choice A is also correct. I will give an extreme example. We can assume a person watch TV once a year and only 2 hours generally and he has a large amount of free time everyday such as 8 hours. He can increase the time cost on computer for fun from 2 hours to 4 hours a day and it will not affect he spends 2 hours a year to watch TV.
Can someone correct me?
Thanks in advance!

Crystal, what you said basically makes sense, but that answer is a typical "does not actually have to be the case" answer choice.

The truth is that the point of the argument is that people's viewing habits have not changed. So here's an example to counter your example.

What if 48% of the respondents watch television regularly, 48% watch television sometimes, and 4% watch televison rarely? If the vast majority of the respondents report no change, then you have still gotten reports of no change from many who watch TV regularly.

Even more importantly, the question at hand is whether spending free time using computers will cause a decline in television viewing. Whether people watch television regularly, sometimes or rarely, if the viewing habits of people in general do not change, then television viewing will not decline.

So maybe what you did is to bring to the situation an assumption that is unwarranted, which assumption is something along the lines of that if most of the respondents to the survey did not report watching television regularly, the survey did not capture what people in general do.

So that's what wrong with A. As long as the survey captures a representative sample of what is going on, the survey results are a reliable indicator of the effects of computer use on television viewing.

As a matter of fact, if most people in general do not watch television regularly, and if the respondents to the survey were to say that they do watch television regularly, then the survey would not be consistent with the overall reality.

So unless you know what the viewing habits of the general population are, the answer to A is not useful.