180 reviewed TARA questions

Wards at our hospital are considering twelve-hour nursing shifts. Wards that have already moved report fewer errors in handing patients over, because a patient is seen by two nurses a day instead of three. Fewer handovers means fewer chances for a detail to be lost, so twelve-hour shifts will make our wards safer for patients.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

1. ANurses on the wards that have already moved prefer working twelve-hour shifts.
2. BLonger shifts do not create patient risks that outweigh fewer handover errors. (the key)
3. CEvery error on a ward can be traced to a failure at a handover.
4. DThe hospital has enough nursing staff to cover a twelve-hour rota.
5. EHandover errors are the most common type of error on the hospital's wards.

Why B is right

The argument moves from one specific improvement (fewer handover errors) to a general claim (the wards will be safer). That step only works if nothing else about a twelve-hour shift makes things worse, with fatigue late in a shift being the obvious candidate. Negate option B and the conclusion collapses: if longer shifts bring larger risks of their own, wards could have fewer handover errors and still be less safe. That negation test is what identifies a load-bearing assumption.

Why the others tempt you

A

Staff preference is not needed. The conclusion is about patient safety, and an argument does not depend on a claim that could be false without damaging it. Unpopular shifts could still be safer ones.

C

Far stronger than the argument needs, and this is the usual trap in assumption questions. The argument only needs handovers to be one source of error, not the only one. Answers containing 'every', 'all' or 'only' are usually too strong to be assumptions.

D

This concerns whether the rota can be put into operation, not whether the safety inference holds. Even if staffing were difficult, the argument could still be right that twelve-hour shifts would make patients safer if introduced.

E

The argument needs handover errors to matter, not to rank first. If they were the second most common source, cutting them would still reduce errors and the reasoning would stand.

What to keep

Negate each candidate and reread the argument. The assumption is the one whose negation makes the conclusion fail. And when an argument reaches a broad verdict ('safer', 'better', 'cheaper') from a single narrow gain, the missing assumption is very often 'nothing else moves in the opposite direction'.

Governments should fund the arts only where the public would not pay for them directly. Discuss.

UAT-UK does not score the Writing Task. It passes your response to the universities you applied to, for the courses that require TARA, so it reaches them as writing and never as a mark.

The obvious objection is that this reasoning has no floor. Every failed project can be described as an unrecognised investment or an option worth keeping, and a rule that funds anything unpopular funds waste at public expense. That objection is largely right, and the principle cannot stand without a test it can fail. So the claim narrows: public funding is justified where a specific benefit outside the transaction can be named in advance, and where the loss would be irreversible. Where a funder cannot name either, the fact that nobody will pay is evidence, not an obstacle. That test rules out most of what the objection worries about, and it rules out some things I would rather keep.

This is the move a tutor can see you make: the objection is stated at full strength, granted as 'largely right', and paid for with a test the position can fail, rather than hedged away. Nothing here is scored, so the only thing it can earn you is a reader who thinks you would be worth interviewing.