GRE Sample Essay Analyze an Arguement

[bryanmusk]

Hello again!  attached is another sample essay I wrote for Analyze an Argument for the GRE.  I would really appreciate any feedback, to include what a realistic score this essay would receive (0-6).  I select my prompts from ETS.ORG and use Microsoft word pad so there is no spell check.  Thank you in advance for any help and feedback you provide!  Below is the prompt and essay: 

prompt:
The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.

"A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
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      A recent study found that exectuives who sleep less, tend to perform better at work.  The result, they claim, is a more prosperous firm.  Howver, the amount of sleep buissness executives receive does not drive a firm to prosper or fail.  There are numerous other variables and invalid assumptions this study makes.

      Relying on a large sample size of 300 executives, the study portrays an overconfident attitude that its large of amoount of personnel examined provides more legitmate results.  What the study fails to differentiate is how different each executive truly is.  Each executive has different experiences both at work and at home.  The study fails to go into further detail on which individuals are married, have children, lead large teams vs small teams, and enjoy thier work.  An excutive who is single, manages a small technical team of 8 people, and enjoys his or her job will likley have a larger impact on a firm's successus than the executive who is married, has 3 children, and leads a diverse team of 30 people full of comnflict regardless of how much sleep they each get at night.  They are so many other factors in the professional and personal life of each exectuive that can effect thier perforamnce at work and the overall success of a firm.  This study relies too much on a simple response of how much sleep each exetucive gets instead of collecting and analyzing a plethora a data easily avaiable as well. IF the study did in fact isolate other variables, such as marital status, scope of repsonsibilty, and number of children then maybe sleep could be in fact the determinent of success.  When all other variables are held constant it is much eaiser to see which one truly affects an outcomes.

      The article seems to also assume that high profit margins and fast growth are the key for a buisness to prosper.  While these may both be solid indicators of a firm's success in a single snapshot, they don't necessarily determine a prosperous life cycle and model for a buisness.  The article failed to mentioned is the data collected for profit margin and growth was simply collected in a single quarter or if over a year.  If it was indeed in a small time frame, it could likely be a result of coincidence due to favorable macro-economic condtions.  A strong market can make any buisness falsely inflate with growth and profit with staff of sleepless exectuives.  Overall, the study really did a poor job demonstrating that the individuals who sleep less truly enable a firm to prosper.  There is much room to detemrnine a prosperous buisness model.  Had the study outlined the time frame in which the data was collected (quarter) along with several key variavbles such as profit and revenue then it is possible that to more confidenlty infer that these sleepless executives have consistent results and their sleep habits may truly affect performance.

      Quality of sleep is an enormous variable that the study fell short to address.  The qualtiy of sleep an individual recives varies greatly based on age, diet, daily stress, history of injuries, and the type of mattress and bed.  It could be very likely that the study neglected the age of the exectuvies.  It is possible that the older (50 years plus) excetuives, who biologically dont need as much as thier younger counteroparts, thrive on 6 hours of sleep. The younger exectuvies in thier thirties simply are not adapted to sleeping such few hours.  Additianlluy, the senior exectuives also have 20 plus years of experince on the younger exectuvies.  This could also likley be the result for the higher permfroamnce and have nothing to do with sleep at all.  The study is too ambigous in assuming that all exectuives studies incur the same quality of sleep without addressing the other important factors.  If they considered an age bracket for exectuvies, matched that withthe number of hours slept, and still discovered less sleep led to higher performance then that would possbily suffice.

     Assesing a sample of people's sleep hours against thier performance is simply not sufficient to condlcude that sleep determines performance of an individual.  There are many other variables to consider.