An inference question tests whether you can finish the text's reasoning using only its clues. Read the words leading into the blank to see what kind of ending it needs. For a conclusion based on historical sources, put the clues in a few words and ask what those sources can show. Predict the smallest conclusion the clues support. Wrong endings often sound reasonable but add claims the clues don't support.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at who wrote the surviving diaries and what historians hope to learn from them.
- Hint 2
Put the two groups in a few words: the diary writers and the people whose working conditions historians want to reconstruct.
- Hint 3
What does the phrase "small segment of the population" let you conclude about how broadly historians can use these accounts?
Step-by-step
From the writers to the conclusion
Step 1Identify the writers and the goal
The diaries came mainly from people who were both literate and financially comfortable. What are historians trying to learn from them? They want to reconstruct typical working conditions of the era, so the blank must explain how evidence from one small group can be used to describe working life more broadly.
- Step 2
Predict how far the evidence reaches
Can these writers stand for the population as a whole? The small segment of the population that supplied most diaries may have had different working lives from people with less money, so some experiences may be missing from these accounts. The diaries can still tell us about work in the writers' group. They may be useful without giving the whole picture, so our prediction should limit how broadly historians use them.
- Step 3
Test the unsupported claims
Which endings go past our prediction? The claim about numerical details adds a rule about social bias that the passage never gives, and the most representative evidence available assumes we know how these diaries compare with other sources, which the passage never tells us. The ending cannot be reconstructed from personal writing at all goes too far because a small segment of the population can still provide useful accounts. The text limits these diaries, not all personal writing.
- Step 4
Choose a careful response
The words generally written describe most diaries, not necessarily every diary, so may overrepresent privileged perspectives stays within the evidence. The phrase adjust their conclusions accordingly tells historians to allow for that uneven view when describing typical work. Choice D.