GRE Issue; Study about sleep amount and firm success

Hi,
I would like a feedback regarding my essay; grammar-wise, vocab use, context addressed, and analytical writing. Score estimates are also very welcome :)

sleep of the executives and their success

Question

"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.

Response

Based on the study conducted in certain advertisement agencies, the article concludes that the number of hours executives sleep has an impact on business success. However, I find the argument specious at best, because it relies on a series of doubtful assumptions.

To begin with, the study methodology itself might be problematic. In particular, we are not informed whether the sample represents the population. An explanation is needed whether 300 executives are enough to draw a conclusion. Digging deeper, it is yet to be explained whether the ratio of male-female also their characteristics and habits describe the general population of business executives. The sampling explanation is important because it justifies whether the conclusion can be applied to the general population. By having problematic sampling methods, the conclusion may only apply to a selective group, thus rendering the idea that less sleep hours do have a positive impact on business invalid.

Even if the methodology is correct, it is still not enough to draw any conclusions without considering the other factors that might contribute to the success of the advertising firms. Possibly advertising agencies with higher profit margins owe their success to a variety of other factors such as the executives quality or better market situation. Further studies are needed to determine which factor has a strong effect towards firm success. Without considering other factors, sleep hours and firm success do have a correlated relationship but it is yet to be proven whether it also includes a causal effect. Therefore it is too early to jump into a conclusion.

Another problem in the argument is that it assumes that advertising business is not different than general business. The assumption is rather problematic as while different business sectors may have similarities, other may have different styles and cultures. Perhaps in information technology sectors sleep derivation is considered as a norm. On the other hand having less sleep in advertising business may not be a problem, whereas in construction business adequate sleep is important as strong stamina is needed. Unless the argument explaines what business sectors are being referred, less sleep is not justified to have an impact on business prosperities.

The argument above suffers from dubious assumptions. Therefore the statement about hiring people who needs less sleep is an important factor for business to prosper is unconvincing.

This is a better attempt on your part. You improved your presentation from the first practice essay by one whole point, bringing your total score for this essay up to a possible 4 band mark. There are still problematic sentence structures that you need to improve upon. I strongly urge you to focus on additional English sentence competency exercises to help you achieve this goal. You have problems using connecting words, a or an, and some transliterate presentations from your native tongue to English. All of which are preventing you from achieving a higher band score. Not to worry though, your explanations are still clear, properly developed, just not well presented in terms of sentence structure. That you can keep working on as you progress with your exercises. What is important is that you show how well you understand the topic and, that you have the ability to create relevant opinions regarding it. Good job.