GMAT Sample Questions

GMAT Verbal Section : GMAT Sample Critical Reasoning Questions

56. Lark Manufacturing Company initiated a voluntary Quality Circles program for machine operators. Independent surveys of employee attitudes indicated that the machine operators participating in the program were less satisfied with their work situations after two years of the program's existence than they were at the program's start. Obviously, any workers who participate in a Quality Circles program will, as a result, become less satisfied with their jobs.

    Each of the following, if true, would weaken the conclusion drawn above EXCETP:

    1. The second survey occurred during a period of recession when rumors of cutbacks and layoffs at Lark Manufacturing were plentiful .
    2. The surveys also showed that those Lark machine operators who neither participated in Quality Circles nor knew anyone who did so reported the same degree of lessened satisfaction with their work situations as did the Lark machine operators who participated in Quality Circles.
    3. While participating in Quality Circles at Lark Manufacturing, machine operators exhibited two of the primary indicators of improved job satisfaction: increased productivity and decreased absenteeism.
    4. Several workers at Lark Manufacturing who had participated in Quality Circles while employed at other companies reported that, while participating in Quality Circles in their previous companies, their work satisfaction had increased.
    5. The machine operators who participated in Quality Circles reported that, when the program started, they felt that participation might improve their work situations.

    Answer : E

    Questions 57-58 are based on the following.

    Blood banks will shortly start to screen all donors for NANB hepatitis. Although the new screening tests are estimated to disqualify up to 5 percent of all prospective blood donors, they will still miss two-thirds of donors carrying NANB hepatitis. Therefore, about 10 percent of actual donors will still supply NANB-contaminated blood.

57. The argument above depends on which of the following assumptions?
    1. Donors carrying NANB hepatitis do not, in a large percentage of cases, carry other infections for which reliable screening tests are routinely performed.
    2. Donors carrying NANB hepatitis do not, in a large percentage of cases, develop the disease themselves at any point.
    3. The estimate of the number of donors who would be disqualified by tests for NANB hepatitis is an underestimate.
    4. The incidence of NANB hepatitis is lower among the potential blood donors than it is in the population at large.
    5. The donors who will still supply NANB-contaminated blood will donate blood at the average frequency for all donors.

    Answer : A

58. Which of the following inferences about the conse-quences of instituting the new tests is best supported by the passage above?
    1. The incidence of new cases of NANB hepatitis is likely to go up by 10 percent.
    2. Donations made by patients specifically for their own use are likely to become less frequent.
    3. The demand for blood from blood banks is likely to fluctuate more strongly.
    4. The blood supplies available from blood banks are likely to go down.
    5. The number of prospective first-time donors is likely to go up by 5 percent.

    Answer : D

59. Child's World, a chain of toy stores, has relied on a "supermarket concept" of computerized inventory control and customer self-service to eliminate the category of sales clerks from its force of employees. It now plans to employ the same concept in selling children's clothes. The plan of Child's World assumes that
    1. supermarkets will not also be selling children's clothes in the same manner
    2. personal service by sales personnel is not required for selling children's clothes successfully
    3. the same kind of computers will be used in inventory control for both clothes and toys at Child's World
    4. a self-service plan cannot be employed without computerized inventory control
    5. sales clerks are the only employees of Child's World who could be assigned tasks related to inventory control

    Answer : B

60. Continuous indoor fluorescent light benefits the health of hamsters with inherited heart disease. A group of them exposed to continuous fluorescent light survived twenty-five percent longer than a similar group exposed instead to equal periods of indoor fluorescent light and of darkness.

    The method of the research described above is most likely to be applicable in addressing which of the following questions?

    1. Can industrial workers who need to see their work do so better by sunlight or by fluorescent light?
    2. Can hospital lighting be improved to promote the recovery of patients?
    3. How do deep-sea fish survive in total darkness?
    4. What are the inherited illnesses to which hamsters are subject?
    5. Are there plants that require specific periods of darkness in order to bloom?

Answer : B