Question 141·Hard·Inferences
Because surviving 18th-century diaries were generally written by the small segment of the population that was both literate and financially comfortable, historians who rely on these diaries to reconstruct typical working conditions of the era must ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
For SAT sentence-completion logic questions, paraphrase the sentence and identify the key logical constraint (here: the evidence comes from a privileged minority). Predict what the blank must express (caution about selection bias) before looking at choices. Then eliminate options that (1) don’t actually fix the stated limitation, (2) treat biased evidence as representative, or (3) overstate by claiming nothing can be concluded.
Hints
Focus on who wrote the diaries
Look carefully at the description of the diary writers. Are they typical of the entire 18th-century working population, or are they from a particular subgroup?
Connect the evidence to the historians’ goal
Historians are trying to reconstruct typical working conditions. How might it be a problem if their main sources come from a small, advantaged segment of the population?
Decide what a responsible historian would do
Given that the sources come from a limited group, should historians fully trust them, question them, ignore them, or combine them with something else? Look for the option that shows appropriate caution based on the information in the sentence.
Check for relevance and logic in each choice
Be wary of choices that offer a “quick fix” (like focusing on one type of detail), that treat the diaries as representative despite the stated limitation, or that overreact by claiming nothing can be learned at all.
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand the setup of the sentence
The sentence says that surviving 18th-century diaries were written by a small, special group of people: those who were both literate and financially comfortable. That means the diary writers are not a random cross-section of everyone, but a more privileged group.
Identify the logical issue historians face
Historians are using these diaries to reconstruct typical working conditions of the era. But if the sources mostly come from people who are relatively well-off and literate, there is a risk that the diaries do not fully represent the experiences of poorer or less educated workers. So the blank should describe what historians must do in light of this mismatch between who wrote the diaries and whose conditions they are trying to describe.
Predict the kind of action needed
Since the evidence comes from a limited, privileged group, historians should not treat it as automatically representative. They should explicitly recognize the likely selection bias and make sure any conclusions about what is “typical” are adjusted to account for it.
Evaluate each answer choice and select the best match
Choice A: Recognizes that diary evidence may overrepresent privileged perspectives and says historians should adjust conclusions. This directly follows from the fact that the surviving diaries come from a literate, financially comfortable minority.
Choice B: Suggests focusing only on wages and hours because numbers are supposedly less biased. Even if the entries include numbers, the people reporting them are still a skewed group, so this does not solve the representativeness problem stated in the sentence.
Choice C: Treats the diaries as the “most representative” evidence simply because other records are scarce. Scarcity does not eliminate the bias described; this choice encourages overgeneralizing from a privileged subset.
Choice D: Claims typical working conditions cannot be reconstructed from personal writing at all. The sentence indicates a limitation (bias), not impossibility; historians can still use diaries carefully, so this overstates the conclusion.
Therefore, the best completion is recognize that diary-based evidence may overrepresent privileged perspectives and adjust their conclusions accordingly.