Which SAT involves critiquing an analysis from an external perspective?

• A. Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH)
• B. Key Assumptions Check
• C. Devil's Advocacy
• D. Red Teaming

Answer: (A)

Focusing on testing an analysis by exposing it to outside critique is what Analysis of Competing Hypotheses does. This technique pushes you to lay out multiple plausible explanations for the evidence—each competing hypothesis—and then evaluate how well the evidence supports or refutes each one. The key is to seek disconfirming evidence and to ask what would have to be true for each alternative to be favored. By doing this, you critique the favored conclusion from an external standpoint, not just by reinforcing what you already believe.

Devil’s Advocacy, while it also probes arguments, typically involves someone within the group arguing against the preferred position to surface counterarguments, which is more about internal challenge. Key Assumptions Check targets the underlying premises of the analysis, not the external breadth of competing explanations. Red Teaming is about adopting an external adversary perspective to stress-test the analysis, which is related but conceptually broader than the structured comparison of hypotheses ACH formalizes.

So, the approach that best captures critiquing an analysis from an external perspective through competing explanations and disconfirming evidence is the method that focuses on analyzing competing hypotheses.