venmic wrote:Which of the following best completes the passage below?
In a survey of job applicants, two-fifths admitted to being at least a little dishonest. However, the survey may underestimate the proportion of job applicants who are dishonest, because____.


A. some dishonest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be honest
B. some generally honest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be dishonest
C. some people who claimed on the survey to be at least a little dishonest may be very dishonest
D. some people who claimed on the survey to be dishonest may have been answering honestly
E. some people who are not job applicants are probably at least a little dishonest

Why is A right?

I understand why C D E is wrong but why A

I understand that since you have already found the reason to eliminate C, D, & E, You want to select from option A and B.
Rather than looking at A, lets look at option B and See why this option is wrong.
option B says 'some generally honest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be dishonest' -- my question to reject this statement will be 'why an Honest person will lie in the survey?' -- This question is weakening this statement.. Hence I will move on and consider option A.

A says that 'Some dishonest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be honest' if you read the question stem again then you will see that second part start with the word 'However' -- means that this is challenging the results found in the first part.. and option A is strengthening this conclusion by saying that the results may be wrong because dishonest people may have lied in the survey... (well this is the meaning of dishonesty -- telling lies )