Please rate My Assay (AWA)

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Please rate My Assay (AWA)

by Abdallah Fawzy » Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:53 pm
Good day Everyone.
I would be grateful if you rated my below AWA Essay. Thanks in advance.
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The following appeared in the editorial section of a corporate newsletter:
"The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a
recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits
programs."
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
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The Author suggests that, a survey was published showing 79 percent of total 1200 workers are interested in topics like corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits program. As a conclusion, he advises that this information contradicts the common notion that workers aren't interested about management issues. Thus, the latter information is proved to be false. Taking a closer look at the argument, it is clear that the author made a very weak statement which is based on a number of inherently flawed assumptions. These are they key reasons for the argument being flawed:

First, there provided information is hugely insufficient to make such argument. Furthermore, the author makes many general judgments to prove his case. For instance, he stated that 1200 workers responded to survey, without any data showing what segment these workers belong to, what are the total number of workers, which industry or industries were targeted by the survey, and other important factors which are key to make any good reflections on the status of workers and their interests.

Second, to make good insights on workers interests, it's key to know what measurements are being used to make such surveys, and which exact issues the workers are interested in and which are not. The author fails to describe any specific data to support his argument and illustrate how he reached the conclusion. And also, there is no parallel between what the survey shows and what the common notion suggests. For example, people may be very interested, generally, in benefits programs to maximize their own benefits, while not interested in being managers or how to enhance cooperation within the team. So we can conclude that people can still be interested about issues that work for their own benefits, without necessarily being interested in granular details of management. Again, as the author states nothing about the aforementioned factors, there is no real base for his argument.

Finally, it's understood that surveys themselves can be misleading and manipulated. For instance, a survey asking people if they were hoping to gain more benefits out of the benefits programs doesn't necessary mean that workers are really interested in the deep details of redesigning the benefits program, the same applies for team restructuring.
Also, the survey itself may be flawed, as author didn't provide any information about where was the survey published, how credible the survey publisher is, what techniques were used, and factors were taken care of while performing the survey. All of the aforementioned reasons illustrate how the argument is inherently flawed.

In summary, we can't build conclusions based on vague, unaccredited, and low quality surveys. Since the author failed to provide any support to his claim, it's clear the argument is weak and needs to have all key factors in place to fully assess the situation.