Hello, here is my first attempt at answering an Argument Task. I did it in 30 mins so I am aware that there may be several mistakes. However,I would love to know what score you would give it. THANK YOU!

QUESTION:
Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

MY ANSWER:
The recommendation that future interviews should be conducted in order to obtain more accurate information is short handed, because it is based on only two outcomes. In order to identify what method of research should be implemented, further studying should be done using both observational and interview data.

The fact that Dr. Field failed to provide interview-based information about child-rearing practices in Tertia does not invalidate his empirical conclusion. In fact, it may be just as valid as Dr. Karp's conclusions. Observational data is simply a different approach to understanding the behavior of a society. Also, observing the way children behave amongst the other members of the island may have provided answers that interview questions may not have asked. It is possible that the kids don't necessarily recall whom they learned something from and when they are asked in an interview question, they simply advocate their rearing to their parents.

On the other hand, basing a conclusion on merely interviews would be a shorthanded approach since the questions may not be geared toward the impact that the rest of the village has on the children. Also, the fact that Dr. Karp interviewed kids in several villages may have had an impact on the conclusions he was able to draw on Tertia Island alone. The author gives a vague understanding to how Dr. Karp was able to draw this conclusion, there is a possibility that the interviews he conducted were too broad and didn't pertain to Tertian children in particular. Therefore, in order to conduct a more adequate interview based study, questions specific to Tertian children should be asked and they should not be biased to the impact biological parents have on the child-rearing process.

Sometimes observing actions gives more information than words from an interview, however the observations are only part of what an appropriate full study should contain. Likewise, interviewing alone would not provide the empirical data needed to make a conclusion about the way the child-rearing process is carried out. Therefore both observational and interview based research should be conducted in order to make concise conclusions. Then, based on these results, a particular method of research in this field can be adopted.