CHAPTER 7
Stability Reconsidered
Qualifications and Rival Hypotheses
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN THE ASSESSMENT
OF STABILITY
The first and most fundamental challenge to any interpretation of data
is the notion of chance: Perhaps the high stability coefficients wereflukes. In this particular case that argument is extremely weak. Statis-tically , the likelihood of observing correlations of this size in samplesthis large purely by chance is less than 1 in 10,000. And it would be co-incidence indeed if we happened to exceed these odds for measures ofall five domains of personality . No scientist would seriously suggestthese are chance results.
If the only data were from the study of the Guilford–Zimmerman
Temperament Survey (GZTS) in the BLSA, one might argue that the re -
sults are not generalizable to other segments of the population. Women
were not included in that study; Blacks and other non-Whites weregreatly underrepresented; education, social class, and intelligence weremarkedly higher in the BLSA study than they are in the full population:Perhaps these characteristics somehow explain the observed stability .However, our conclusions are not based on Table 11 (in Chapter 6)alone. Similar evidence comes from a variety of studies of men andwomen. There is strong replicability of results over samples that areconsiderably more diverse and representative than the BLSA sample.
The same argument—and the same answer—applies to consider -
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