Corrigendum to “Personality and occupational markers of 'solid citizenship’ are associated with having fewer children” [Personality and Individual Differences (2013), 55, 871–876]

Abstract

It has been brought to our attention that in our 2013 PAID article (55, 871–876), some statistical test probabilities were reported incorrectly and some typographical errors were present. We apologize for these and note the specific reporting issues and errors below, with their corrections: Results, Table 6, page 874: currently uses the term “p < 0.000” in five places. Should be changed to: “p < 0.001” Results, paragraph 1, page 875, currently uses the term “p = <.000” in five places. Should be changed to: “p < 0.001” Results, middle of paragraph 1, page 875, currently reads: “Age and cognitive ability themselves also each accounted for a further 1% of the variance in reproductive fitness” should be changed to: “Age and cognitive ability themselves also each accounted for a further 0.1% of the variance in reproductive fitness” Results, middle of paragraph 1, page 875, currently reads: “Adjusted R Squared for this model was.003 or 3% of the variance in reproductive fitness.” should be changed to: “Adjusted R Squared for this model was.003 or 0.3% of the variance in reproductive fitness.” Results, end of paragraph 1, page 875, currently reads: “Adjusted R Squared for this model was.031 or 31% of the variance in risk of unemployment.” should be changed to: “Adjusted R Squared for this model was.031 or 3.1% of the variance in risk of unemployment.” Discussion, middle of paragraph 5, page 875, currently reads: “experienced on average more than three times the amount of unemployment in the 3 years up to interview” should be changed to: “experienced on average approximately 2.7 times the amount of unemployment in the 3 years up to interview”. In Study 2 of our 2013 PAID paper (p. 875), we used ANCOVA to test the relationship between discharge status and reproduction whilst controlling for the influence of age and cognitive ability. The validity of this analysis and its results were questioned on the basis of two methodological points: 1. The dependent variable data were not equal-interval integers or real-valued continuous quantities, but were in fact categories. Our response is that the data are not categories, but rather cardinal numbers; an equal-interval count variable. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number). We might also refer to it as an ordered-class variable, where the order function is equal-interval between classes.2. It was also questioned whether the non-normal distribution of the dependent variable might also invalidate the ANCOVA results. Our investigation of the relevant literature showed that earlier studies on this issue indicate that in large samples such as those used in this analysis (N = 15,283), ANOVA and ANCOVA seem to be relatively unaffected by deviations from normality except where the deviations are severe (e.g., Glass et al., 1972; Schmider et al., 2010).However, given the joint issues in 1 and 2 above, it seemed prudent to at least conduct a non-parametric ANCOVA in which we calculated Spearman's ϱ, then used it to conduct a partial correlation analysis. Our initial parametric ANCOVA result was confirmed; showing that correcting for the influence of age and cognitive ability, there is a statistically significant association between honourable discharge status and number of children r = −0.018, p = 0.029.