This document discusses appeals to authority and how to evaluate their strength. It provides examples of strong and weak appeals to authority based on the reliability of the authority and agreement among experts. While appeals to authority can be useful, they are sometimes problematic if the authority has a non-neutral perspective or agenda. The document suggests asking questions to evaluate an appeal to authority, such as whether the authority is genuinely expert in the topic, experts generally agree, and the authority can be trusted to be honest.

1. Appeals to Authority
It would be nearly impossible to discover all truth for
ourselves; therefore, it is necessary frequently to learn from
others. To do so we have to learn which sources to
trust. Appealing to authority is saying something is true because
an authority says so.
Despite the fact that many make fun of appeals to authority (by
asking if you would jump off a bridge if the authority told you
so), they actually can supply very good arguments. They are
also necessary in real life, as it would be nearly impossible to
learn almost anything without them. Even in the hard sciences,
one could not learn without trusting the claims from the
textbook, the instructors, or of researchers in the field. The
trick is being able to tell which appeals to authority are worth
trusting. Here are some good questions to ask:
1. Is this the kind of question that can be settled by an appeal to
authority (e.g. an objective matter that is testable)?
2. Is the person cited a genuine authority on the topic?
3. Do experts on the topic tend to agree about this question?
4. Can the authority be trusted to be honest in this context?
(There will be a discussion of ulterior motives andinterested
parties later on in this guidance.)
5. Has the authority been interpreted correctly? (Sometimes,
especially when it comes to sources like the bible or the
constitution, this is the most important question.)
An appeal to authority that violates some of the above can
commit the fallacy of appeal to inadequate authority.
Here are two strong ones: “My physics textbook teaches that e =
mc2, so it probably is correct.” “The civil war started in 1861;
my history professor said so.”
Here are two weak ones: “That toothpaste is the best; the
commercial said that 9 out of 10 dentists surveyed
recommended it.” “The president is evil; I read all about it on
some guy’s blog.” Here are some more examples of appeals to

2. authority. How strong would you classify each of them as (and
why)?
Though many appeals to authority are strong, often appeals to
authority are problematic due to the use of non-neutral sources.
Often people are non-neutral due to some kind of interest in the
outcome of the discussion. Interested parties are people whose
views are probably not neutral because they have a stake in the
matter. In logic, we strive to seek to reflect more objective
points of view; people who push only one side of controversial
issues are people that have an agenda rather than an objective
point of view.
Question
Post a strategic approach for addressing participant difficulty in
qualitative interviews. In your strategic approach, do the
following:
· Identify two or more strategies for addressing difficult
participants within the interview process.
· Assess the effectiveness of your identified strategies based on
scholarly research. Be sure to provide scholarly examples to
support your assessment.
Allicia
Great leaders find power in open ended questions.
Practitioners repeatedly note that the everyday behavior of
asking followers open questions and attentively listening to

3. their responses is a powerful leadership technique Van
Quaquebeke and Felps (2018). While researching can be
challenging and overwhelming, it is imperative to have a plan as
it relates to the types of questions you want to ask. For
instance, when asking sensitive questions. Saunders, Lewis,
and Thornhill (2015) suggest leaving sensitive questions to the
end of the interview to build the trust and confidence of the
interviewee.
Open ended questions are designed to encourage the interviewee
to provide an extensive and detailed response to give helpful
information for the study Saunders et al. (2015). As an ex-
police officer I have had the opportunity to ask many questions
of witnesses and typically the more comfortable I made the
setting the more information they would divulge. Additionally,
strategically asking different types of questions during the
interview builds a good rapport and opens the level of
communication.
According to Powell, Hughes-Scoles, Smith, and Sharman
(2014), professionals across the globe are taught how to use
open ended questions because if there is poor use of open-ended
questions they could dictate what specific details are required or
expected. The purpose of the interview is to get the facts to
assist the researcher in their study.
Powell, M. B., Hughes-Scholes, C. H., Smith, R., & Sharman, S.
J. (2014). The relationship between investigative interviewing
experience and open-ended question usage. Police Practice &
Research, 15(4), 283–292. https://doi-
org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/15614263.2012.704170
Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research
methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England:
Pearson Education Unlimited.
Van Quaquebeke, N., & Felps, W. (2018). Respectful Inquiry: A
Motivational Account of Leading through Asking Questions and
Listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5–27.
https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0537

4. Mythily
Dealing with Difficult Participants
Interviewing, field observations, and document analysis
are the primary methods of data collection in qualitative studies
(Chenail, 2011). The primary focus during data collection for
qualitative case studies using interview is on the interviewee.
The interviewer is an observer (Yin, 2018) or an instrument
(Chenail, 2011) who must be prepared and must cater to the
interviewee’s schedules, availability and make special
arrangements as needed to collect the data (Yin, 2018).
Strategies for Addressing Difficult Participants
Participants can display difficult behavior in a variety of
ways like answering in monosyllables, digressing from the
topic, getting upset, or even start to interview the interviewer
(Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2015). Saunders et al. (2015)
listed multiple approaches when the interviewer meets
participants who are difficult to interview: (a) using open-ended
questions while receiving monosyllabic answers, (b) reassuring
confidentiality of the interview process, (c) referring back to
the questions when the participants digress or start questioning
the interviewer, (d) staying calm and patient when the
participant gets upset. Interviewers can practice conducting
interviews (Yin, 2018; Saunders et al, 2015) so they can be
prepared to recognize interview pitfalls and respond
appropriately. Interviewers can use a technique called
interviewing the interviewer where the researcher assumes the
role of a participant to create and revise interview protocols
(Chenail, 2011).
While conducting interviews for the small-scale

5. project this week, I faced one of these situations. I used the
interview protocol with open-ended questions (Walden
University, n.d.) for the interview and some participants
digressed from the question. I used the referring back to the
question strategy identified by Saunders et al. (2015) to get the
answers to my questions. Some of the answers I received made
me realize that I must refine my questions, potentially combine
some questions, and make them specific and at the same time,
ensure the questions are probing and open-ended (Chenail,
2011; Saunders et al., 2015; Walden University, n.d.).
References
Chenail, R. (2011). Interviewing the investigator: Strategies for
addressing instrumentation and researcher bias concerns in
qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 16(1), 255–262.
Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR16-
1/interviewing
Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research
methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England:
Pearson Education Unlimited.
Walden University. (n.d.). DBA doctoral study rubric and
research handbook. Available from
http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter/osra/dba
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design
and methods (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Presenting Arguments in Standard Form
One of the chief goals of a logic class is to evaluate the quality
of reasoning. Since we strive (or ought to

6. strive) to base our beliefs and actions on high-quality reasoning,
we must first learn how to discern the
difference between good reasoning and bad reasoning.
We express reasoning in the form of arguments. An argument is
a series of statements, called premises,
that are given in support of the truth of another statement,
called the conclusion. Here is an example,
expressed in standard form (with the premises listed above the
conclusion):
P1: Being a surgeon would pay better but would allow less time
with my family.
P2: Being a family practice doctor would fulfill me more at a
personal level.
P3: Being fulfilled personally and spending more time with my
family are higher priorities to me
than making more money.
C: Therefore, I will choose to go into family practice.
Putting arguments into this form promotes clarity and facilitates
evaluation. It also is important because of
what it leaves out: We are not distracted by emotion,
relationships, etc. We just have the pure argument,
making it much easier to evaluate its quality objectively.
Presenting Arguments in Standard Form

7. Part A. For this discussion, you will present an argument on
each side of the Topic Choice: “Is it permissible to use capital
punishment on persons convicted of certain crimes?” In your
post, present the best argument you can on each side of your
topic above present each argument in standard form (attached is
a standard form template), with the premises listed above the
conclusion. Minimum Word Count 400.
Part B. For this discussion, you will discuss this argument
form, as well as how to use it to improve your reasoning and
your life. Minimum Word Count 400.
· Give three examples of appeals to authority (they can be from
real source or experiences, or you can make them up). One
should be very strong, one very weak, and one in the middle.
Evaluate the quality of each.
· Provide an example of a time in which you or someone you
know was fooled by trusting a source that turned out to be
unreliable.
· Provide another paragraph or two in which you discuss appeals
to authority in general, by addressing some of these types of
questions: How do we know which sources are reliable and
trustworthy? Do you find that there are some types of sources of
which people are too trusting? How might we learn to display
the proper amount of skepticism and trust in relation to sources?
Are people too trusting of media sources, and is there a way to
overcome these tendencies? How can we make sure those are
the best sources and not be deceived by deceptive ones?