Effects of Workers ’ Careers and Family Situations on OCB-Related Work Values

A variety of reasons why workers exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) have been discussed; one that has received limited attention is that certain of workers’ work values (i.e., their OCB-related ones) cause them to take certain types of discretionary contributions to organizations for granted. We investigate the effects of workers’ careers and family situations on OCB-related work values by examining data collected from 6,860 Japanese workers. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed some expected effects of labor hours, marital status, and annual income on work values relevant to OCB for individuals (OCBI) and OCB for the organization (OCBO). However, male workers’ organizational tenure was not associated with OCB-related work values, whereas that of female workers was negatively associated with OCBI-related work values, contrary to expectations. Some implications for future research are also discussed.


Introduction
Research focused on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been conducted worldwide since two pioneering academic papers by the team of Dr. Dennis Organ of Indiana University (Bateman & Organ, 1983;Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983).Although OCB research has been performed consistently, workers' motivations to exhibit OCB are controversial.Organ (1988) defined OCB as "individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and [that] in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization" (Organ, 1988;Organ, Podsakoff, & Mackenzie, 2006, p. 5).Although this definition emphasizes the range of behaviors on which researchers should focus, it fails to mention workers' motives or intentions to exhibit these types of discretionary contributive behaviors.As presented in Organ et al. (2006), past studies discovered that workers' OCB affected performance evaluations provided by those workers' supervisors, even though OCB was not formally imposed on those workers.Thus, some workers might exhibit OCB for impression management (Bolino, 1999;Schnake, 1991).Further, as revealed in Morrison's (1994) empirical study, supervisors expected that certain behaviors that could be considered OCB comprised workers' formal tasks.It is important to consider these various kinds of discretionary contributions: though they might appear to be the same, they are usually based on different motives.
No matter how accurately an organization describes concrete work behaviors in job descriptions, it is impossible to specify workers' every behavior in advance, because they face environmental uncertainties.Thus, workers' situations and their thoughts and feelings about their work play important roles in determining their actual work behaviors.Particularly, each worker has a specific orientation or set of values related to his/her own work (e.g., "I should do this" or "I want to do this").Work values can be defined as workers' orientations to their work; for example, some workers may view their work comprehensively and attempt to do almost anything for their organizations.Alternatively, some other workers may consider their jobs solely as means to earn money to support themselves and their families; those workers may be unwilling to perform tasks that appear unrelated to this objective.Behavioral orientation may differ according to workers' work values.
Japanese organizations, on which we focus in this article, usually do not use job descriptions, or if job descriptions are available, they fail to provide adequate information about tasks to be performed-unlike those used by Western employers.The breadth of workers' perceptions of their jobs is especially important for OCB research in Japan.The findings of this article will contribute to management theory by determining how management can improve workers' actual OCB without assuming reciprocal relationships between workers and organizations.
The article is composed of six sections.Following the Introduction, in the second section, OCB classification by expectation of rewards and intra-or extra-behaviors is provided to identify situations in which work values influence actual OCB.In the third section, we describe hypotheses regarding the effects of family and career factors on OCB-related work values.Research methods (e.g., sampling and measurement) and empirical results are shown in the fourth and fifth sections, respectively.Finally, in the sixth section, we discuss this article's implications for current trends in OCB research and some limitations that are expected to be addressed in future study.

OCB Classification Based on the Motives of OCB Performers
The concept of OCB was originally developed during discussions that emphasized the need to enlarge the range of work performance that should be observed to discover whether a strong relationship exists between job satisfaction and work performance (Organ, 1977).As described previously, the most popular definition of OCB was provided by Organ (1988) and Organ, et al. (2006).This definition did not include examinations of the reasons for and the backgrounds of these discretionary behaviors.In addition to his reference to contextual performance, Organ (1997) also proposed a refined definition of OCB that focused on the role of these behaviors in organizations.His refined definition of OCB can aid in the definition of the range of OCB regardless of performers' perceptions of distinctions that can be made between intra-and extra-role behaviors or workers' motives to perform OCB-like behaviors.
Past studies on OCB classified OCB-like behaviors into several forms, focusing on who benefits from these behaviors or which concrete behaviors meet the definition of OCB.For example, the distinction of OCBO (OCB for the organization) vs. OCBI (OCB for specific individuals [e.g., supervisors, peers]) is the most typical classification; it focuses on the objects toward which OCBs are directed (Williams & Anderson, 1991).Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, and Fetter's (1990) five dimensions model is one of the most well-known OCB classifications; it classifies concrete behaviors that meet the definition of OCB into five forms through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).In contrast, little research has proposed OCB classifications that depend on performers' perceptual and/or motivational differences.However, it can be beneficial to classify various OCB-like behaviors according to these differences (Table 1 lists these classifications).This form of classification is very important because of the effects of these behaviors on other workers and/or the organization, and the best method by which to encourage these behaviors can differ according to where these behaviors are positioned.The horizontal axis of Table 1 reveals whether OCB is performed as intra-role or extra-role behaviors.For example, the provision of assistance to a coworker is considered one of the most typical types of OCB (specifically, OCBI).Some workers will assist coworkers even if not required to by their job descriptions, because they realize the importance of their reciprocal relationships with their organizations.Thus, this type of OCB exceeds formal obligations.Alternatively, some workers support their coworkers because they believe it to be one of their intra-role behaviors.Some provisions of job descriptions are described in excessively general terms, leaving room for workers to determine which behaviors to include in their intra-job behaviors.Some workers believe it their obligation to perform any task required to further abstract organizational goals (e.g., "to help the organization prosper").Depending on interpretations of these general descriptions, the same or similar helping behaviors may be considered as either extra-role or intra-role behaviors.
The vertical axis of Table 1 reveals differences in workers' expectations that they will receive a reward for exhibiting OCB.OCB is defined as behaviors that are not directly or explicitly recognized by formal reward systems (Organ, 1988;Organ et al., 2006); thus, workers do not expect rewards in return for performing OCB.However, past research on the performance evaluation process has shown that workers' OCBs are appreciated by their supervisors.Therefore, in addition to cases in which workers exhibit OCB based solely on their pure motivation to contribute, some workers exhibit OCB for impression management and with the expectation of promotion in rank or salary (Bolino, 1999;Schnake, 1991).
We discovered four different kinds of OCB on the basis of the discussion presented above.First, the type of OCB listed in cell (A) is performed as a type of formal obligation.Therefore, workers may expect that this type of OCB would be rewarded by their organization.The type of OCB listed in cell (B) is performed for impression management.In this case, workers are well aware that these types of behaviors exceed their formal obligations.However, at the same time, they may expect rewards for performing OCB, as they also know that these behaviors are appreciated by their supervisors.The type of OCB listed in cell (C) is interesting; workers perform it based on their personal social missions or work values.Therefore, they may naturally feel responsible for the performance of these behaviors.However, they might not expect formal rewards for these behaviors, because they know that these types of behaviors are not prescribed by their job descriptions.Finally, the behaviors in cell (D) align with the original definition of OCB provided by Organ (1988) and Organ et al. (2006); these behaviors are performed as parts of social exchanges based on assumptions of reciprocal interactions between organizations and workers.The social exchange view provides a powerful explanation for why workers exhibit OCB (Organ et al., 2006).However, some previous researchers have claimed that this view does not fully describe all OCBs that workers exhibit (Hui, Law, & Chen, 1999;Ueda, 2009;Ueda & Yoshimura, 2011).Further, the problem created by pseudo-OCB as impression management has also been addressed by previous researchers (Bolino, 1999;Schnake, 1991).
In contrast, only a limited number of studies have focused on the type of OCB displayed in cell (C) of Table 1.This type of OCB is very important for at least two reasons: First, although the social exchange perspective can be related to workers' factual premises (i.e., their perceptions of contracts developed between themselves and their organizations), the work value perspective can be related to their value premises.It is not possible to explain all types of OCB solely according to factual premises, because it is difficult to imagine that workers remain vividly aware of their social contracts with their organizations while performing trivial daily activities within their organizations.Second, the work value view has important implications for the recruitment of new staff.The employment of persons who possess work values that encourage them to perform OCB is especially important.If workers have these types of work values, managers will not need to motivate them to perform behaviors not included in their job descriptions.

OCB and Work Values
Researchers have offered a variety of definitions of work values.For example, Duffy (2010) Hattrup, Mueller, and Joens (2007) also defined work values as "beliefs about the desirability of specific outcomes of working" (p.481).According to their definitions, work values sometimes solely reflect workers' "like and dislike" of their work, and they might sometimes also include morale elements.In either case, work values are associated with OCB.For example, when an employee helps his/her coworker, he/she might do so because s/he might believe that helping others at work is an ethical, obligatory behavior of individuals who work for the organization.Alternatively, s/he might simply like to help others.In either case, work values affect workers' helping behaviors towards their coworkers.
The relationship between work values and OCB has only recently been investigated in empirical studies.Liang (2012) reviewed past studies that examined this relationship.However, most of the articles reviewed focused on the effects of broader cultural values on OCB.Only two studies, those by Feather and Rauter (2004) and Yucel (2008), addressed work values. First, Feather andRauter (2004) examined whether work values affect OCB.They used a sample comprised of 154 schoolteachers in Australia (101 were permanently employed; 53 were employed on fixed-term contracts) and administered a work values scale to note their use of influence, variety, and skill in their current jobs.Yucel (2008) employed a sample of 367 elementary school teachers who worked in Turkey, examining whether their work values influenced their OCB performance.He designated teachers' values of self-development, recognition for contributions, friendly environment, autonomy, and opportunity to exert influence as five dimensions of work values.He discovered that comprehensive measures of four dimensions of OCB were influenced by at least some work values.Finally, Liang (2012) also discovered that intrinsic and extrinsic work values positively impacted OCB.Other researchers have addressed the relationship between work ethic-which is related to work values-and OCB.Cheng (2009) discovered that work ethic significantly increased the amount of explained variance in dependent OCB.Ryan (2002) examined the relationship between the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) and OCB.He discovered that two dimensions of PWE (i.e., hard work and independence) had positive and significant relationships with OCB.Meriac (2012) investigated whether students' work ethic explained their OCB and counterproductive behaviors, discovering that some dimensions of work ethic could be related to each outcome.Rayner, Lawton, and Williams (2012) investigated whether three dimensions of public service ethos influenced OCBI and OCBO (Williams & Anderson, 1991).They discovered that two of the three dimensions investigated had positive and significant effects on OCBI, but none were significantly related with OCBO.
However, although those studies examined the relationships between general work values and OCB, no research has focused on OCB-related work values and the associations of these values with other factors.Although work values are often classified into several categories, researchers have not adopted a consistent classification (Liu & Lei, 2012;Ueda & Ohzono, 2011).A number of researchers have adopted a more fundamental dichotomization of intrinsic vs. extrinsic work values.Other researchers adopted more concrete work values that were directly related to the concept of OCB.For example, Carruthers (1968), one of the pioneering researchers of work values, considered fifteen subcategories of work values.His items, which measure concepts such as supervisory relations and altruism, are directly associated with OCBI.Further, Wang, Chen, Hyde, and Hsieh (2010) discovered a person-related factor that included "relationship[s] with colleagues and supervisors, personal growth, recognition, the use of expertise, knowledge, and competence" (p.879).Zhang, Wang, Yang, and Teng (2007) discovered that personal worth, which includes harmonious relationships with colleagues, could also be related to the human aspect of OCB.A number of Ralston, Gustafson, Elsass, Cheung, and Terpstra's (1992) eleven integration items and the majority of Schwartz's (1994) universalism items might also be related to OCBI.Hagstrom and Kjellberg (2007) considered altruism to be a work value.Finally, Leuty and Hansen (2011) employed principal component analysis to discover that relationships, which can be related to OCB, are one of the six basic dimensions of work values.
To focus on the type of OCB displayed in cell (C) of Table 1, we should consider which forms of work values are directly associated with OCB.Further, although some previous studies addressed the effects of individual factors on general work values (e.g., gender, age, and educational level; Cassar, 2008;Hagstrom & Kjellberg, 2007;Hirschi, 2010;Warr, 2008), no studies have focused on the relationships between OCB-related work values and their antecedents.Therefore, in this article, we focus on the effects of working hours, organizational tenure, number of resignations, marital status, and annual income as the basic career-and family-related antecedents of these work values.

Hypotheses
Past studies have illustrated that some career-related factors influence work values.Although no studies have directly addressed the effects of career-related factors on OCB-related work values, we proposed the following hypotheses on the bases of past results.First, work days and working hours are associated with understandings of coworkers and the organization.When employees work for long periods with each other in an organization, they gain better mutual understanding.Several researchers discovered that longer working hours encourage the formation of some types of work values that encourage helping coworkers.For example, Warr (2008) discovered that full-time workers (>30 hours weekly) possessed stronger work values related to work-role centrality than part-time workers (who worked 30 hours weekly or less).In particular, because Japanese society emphasizes the importance of coworkers existing together under the same roof, workers are expected to develop awareness of and respect for coworkers by working together; that would make coworkers perceive their fellow employees as family members.Further, longer workdays and working hours also facilitate the development of organizational personality, and in turn, work values to contribute to the organization.

Second, researchers
have not yet discovered a clear understanding of the ways in which organizational tenure can influence job behaviors (Ng & Feldman, 2010).In their meta-analysis, Organ and Ryan (1995) failed to discover any indications that workers' tenure in organizations affected OCB.However, in general, longer-tenured workers tended to have deeper understandings of organizational goals and the importance of interactions with coworkers in achieving them.Understanding and knowledge of this kind encourages workers to develop work values broad enough to include OCB aspects of work behaviors, though these broader types of work behaviors may not be included in their job descriptions.Further, Wang, Chen, Hyde, and Hsieh (2010) discovered a negative correlation between people-oriented work values and turnover intentions.If OCB-related work values are solely associated with specific job characteristics, and if workers perform similar jobs in organizations, then organizational tenure might not be significantly correlated with work values.However, as discussed above, employees' experience and knowledge acquired through their work at specific organizations may influence their broader views and work values.If there is high worker turnover (i.e., workers stay at the organization for only short times), they might have (1) failed to understand organizational goals, (2) failed to accumulate knowledge specific to the organization, or (3) did not possess work values broad enough to emphasize the OCB aspects of their work.Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses.Because OCB can be divided into OCBI and OCBO depending on who benefits from the behaviors (other workers or the organization; Williams & Anderson, 1991), our hypotheses can also be divided into sub-hypotheses according to effects on these work values: The effect of marital status (married vs. unmarried) on OCB has received little attention from researchers.However, for the following reasons, we can infer some effects thereof.First, married workers usually have more and more varied roles as family members, some of which may conflict with their roles within their organizations.To decrease the conflict between these different roles, they tend to emphasize work behaviors not clearly prescribed in formal job descriptions or work regulations.Therefore, OCB or similar behaviors may be more readily apparent as behaviors they must first decrease.Thus, workers may have narrow work values that do not include OCB when they are married and have family-related roles.
However, some research has shown that workers might not always decrease their desirable office work behaviors when they experience conflict from their dual family-and office-related roles (Higgins, Duxbury, & Irving, 1992).Further, experiences related to marriage might increase both male and female workers' understanding of such situations and their compassion for workers of the opposite gender.Particularly, this study does not focus on exhibited OCBs but on their relationships with work values.Therefore, even if workers' opportunities to exhibit actual OCBs are limited because of strong conflicts, we believe that their being married helps them broaden their work values and develop OCB.Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis: H3: Employees' being married will positively affect their OCB-related work values.
Finally, the effects of annual income have received only limited attention.Until now, only limited empirical research has examined its relationship with OCB; however, in general, workers who earn higher annual incomes feel that they receive more benefits from their organizations.Therefore, they tend to have expanded work values that include OCB.Under the traditional Japanese seniority system, employees' annual incomes tend to increase with length of employment within an organization.Thus, it is crucial to compare the predictive powers of annual income and organizational tenure and their relationships with work values.Hence, we offer the following hypothesis: H4: Annual income positively will affect employees' OCB-related work values.

Sample
We used data collected from the "Working Persons Survey, 2010" for this study.This data was initially collected via Internet by Recruit Works Inc. (RWI) from more than 9,000 workers who lived in the Tokyo metropolitan area.RWI transmitted the collected data to the Center for Social Science Japan Data Archives (SSJDA), Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo.SSJDA provided permission for our use and analysis of the data.Although RWI collected data from both regular and non-regular workers (i.e., contracted, part-time, and dispatched workers), we only used data collected from regular workers, because RWI's data segment related to work values was solely collected from that group.Therefore, the final sample size was 6,860.The sample consisted of 4,913 male (71.6%) and 1,947 female (28.4%) workers.

Measures
Respondents provided their average working hours weekly (real), service years (i.e., organizational tenure; months), marital status (presence vs. absence of spouse), and annual income (× 10,000 Japanese yen).Respondents had sole discretion on the meaning of "spouse."These variables were treated as independent variables in regression analyses.Age (years) was also used as a control variable in hierarchical regression analysis.
A number of instruments to measure work values have been developed, including the Work Values Inventory (Manhardt, 1972;Super, 1970), the Work Values Scale (Gomez-Meija, 1986), Perceived Importance of Workplace Values (Van Dyne, Graham, & Dienesch, 1994), and the Work Value Survey (Schwartz, 1994).These instruments facilitate comprehensive measurement of different types of employees' work values; however, this current study focuses exclusively on OCB-related work values and examines the effects of workers' career factors on these work values.Therefore, we did not rely on any of the above-mentioned instruments to measure OCBI-and OCBO-related work values (based on Williams & Anderson, 1991).OCBI-related work values.The original questionnaire contained 34 items related to work values, which asked respondents to note how much/little they agreed with each question on a five-point scale ranging from [1] "strongly disagree" to [5] "strongly agree."Three of these questions were associated with provision of help to others in the organization.The average response to these three items was used as this study's index of OCBI-related work values.These items stated, "[Work is] an activity that is helpful to another person," "[Work is] an activity that is appreciated," and "[Work is] an activity I perform with my peers."Although RWI might not have originally intended for these items to be combined, the value of Cronbach's alpha for these three items was .726,indicating reasonably high internal consistency.OCBO-related work values.Similar to the case for OCBI-related work values, we selected three items, the average of the responses to which was used as the index of OCBO-related work values.These items stated, "[Work is] a way to contribute to society or the nation," "[Work is] a way to develop my organization," and "[Work is] a way to represent my organization and enhance its reputation in society."The value of Cronbach's alpha was .723.

Analytical Process
The work situations of male and female workers are different; we inferred that the effects of career and family factors on work values also differ according to gender.Thus, correlation and regression analyses were performed separately by gender.Further, aged workers tend to have longer organizational tenure and higher annual incomes because of the traditional lifelong, seniority-based employment system that still pervades in Japanese organizations.Therefore, hierarchical regression analysis was adopted in order to determine the residual effects of career and family factors on work values after controlling for age.First age and then career and family factors were compulsorily entered into the regression equation.We adopted a stepwise regression in this second step, because some factors have relatively strong intercorrelations.For example, workers with longer organizational tenure tend to earn higher annual incomes in the Japanese employment environment.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations
Table 2 lists the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations of the investigated variables, which indicate gender-based differences between the average values of the independent variables.The results of a t-test showed that male workers work more hours (t = 16.242,p < .001),earn higher incomes (t = 37.374, p < .001),and have longer organizational tenure (t = 17.246, p < .001)than female workers.The higher rate of being married among male than female workers probably means that a fair percentage of female workers resign from their jobs after they get married (t = 22.900, p < .001).
Next, the results of correlation analysis among female workers were not the same as those among male ones.The correlations of working hours with the two types of work values were significantly positive, as expected (OCBI: γ = .065,p < .01;OCBO: γ = .067,p < .01).However, annual income was significantly correlated only with OCBO-related work values (γ = .083,p < .01),and having a spouse was not significantly correlated with either type of work values.Further, though the correlation between organizational tenure and OCBI-work values was significant, its sign was negative, contrary to our expectation (γ = -.115,p < .01);this means that female workers tend to lower their OCBI-related work values as they are employed in organizations for longer periods.

Hypothesis Testing
The results of the hierarchical regression analysis are presented in Table 3. First, among male workers, marital status and annual income have consistent effects on both types of OCB work values.Being married has a significant effect on higher OCBI-(β = .053,p = .001)and OCBO-related (β = .053,p = .001)work values, as does annual income (β = .091,p < .001and β = .136,p < .001,respectively), but the causal effect might be in the opposite direction: those with high OCB-related work values may in turn be promoted and earn higher wages.In contrast, working hours has significantly a positive impact only on OCBI-related work values (β = .039,p = .007),and organizational tenure is not significantly associated with either type of work values after controlling for age.Thus, among male workers, H3 (H3-1, H3-2) and H4 (H4-1, H4-2) are supported, but under H1, only H1-1 is supported, and neither H2-1 nor H2-2 are supported.

Discussion and Conclusion
This study focused on OCB-related work values.The actual work cannot be clearly described in terms of job descriptions but includes discretionary behaviors such as OCB, which contribute to organizations.We assumed that OCB performance is associated with work values and examined the associations of career and family factors with OCB-related work values.The results of an empirical study of 6,860 persons who resided in the Tokyo metropolitan area indicated some effects of working hours, organizational tenure, marital status, and annual income on OCB-related work values, as expected according to our hypotheses.However, some of the expected effects were not observed in the hierarchical regression analyses.The reason for the lack of association between male workers' organizational tenure and either type of work values may be related to age and annual income, which have relatively higher correlations with organizational tenure and work values.The differential effects of marital status according to gender are interesting.Most male workers are responsible for supporting their families after marrying and having children; this change in their situation might enhance their sense of commitment to and responsibility for their organizations.In contrast, female workers' motivations to work after marrying might be more various; some work to support their families, whereas others do because they enjoy it, not out of necessity.
Further, contrary to our hypothesis, female workers' organizational tenure was negatively associated with their OCBI-related work values, even after considering the negative effect of age in that group.Thus, female workers tend to have weaker work values that emphasize mutual help to coworkers with longer organizational tenure.The reason for this tendency is unknown, and future study should investigate how and how differently older and younger female workers think about coworkers when working at organizations.
Academics have defined OCB as being comprised of exhibited behaviors.To avoid common method bias (Organ et al., 2006), these behaviors should be evaluated not by the focal workers themselves but by others who know them well and observe their actual behaviors within their organizations (e.g., supervisors and/or coworkers).However, it can be very difficult to collect data from Japanese supervisors or coworkers, because they tend to differentiate clearly between insiders and outsiders.Hence, they may hesitate to provide important information related to inside subordinates or coworkers to outside researchers.Thus, OCB-related work values could be utilized as alternative measures to examine how OCBs in organizations are influenced by national cultures that differ from those observed in Western society.This article has some limitations that might be addressed in future studies.First, we used data collected without an initial focus on the relationships between OCB-related work values and other variables.Although the questions used to measure the relationships of work values with OCB and extrinsic rewards had reasonable internal consistency, they were not originally intended to measure work values.In future studies, more rigorous and sophisticated methods must be adopted to create questions related to these work values.Second, we should have investigated the causal relationships between work values and other variables that served as antecedents.However, some variables-such as annual income-might serve as consequent rather than antecedent variables of work values, as workers with some specific work values may earn higher incomes than others.For example, Hirschi (2010) revealed the positive effects of intrinsic work values on career development.Workers who experienced this type of career development might discover opportunities to secure better jobs that will increase their incomes more easily.Finally, although we addressed the effects of career-and family-related factors on OCB work values, future studies should focus on more perceptual and/or attitudinal factors that might influence work values, because work values may be created by either surface-level variables (e.g., labor hours and demographic factors) or daily interactions with others in organizations.
More than 30 years have passed since Organ and others emphasized the importance of a strong focus on OCB.In addition, many well-established instruments for the measurement of OCB are available.However, as described previously, new instruments to observe and measure workers' behaviors directly are essential to the performance of OCB research in cultural environments in which supervisors are reluctant to reveal their evaluations of subordinates' behaviors.A stronger focus on OCB work values will undoubtedly provide important clues to influence new directions in future OCB research.
defined work values as "what a person wants out of work in general and also what components of a job are important to his or her work satisfaction" (p.52).Dose (1997) defined work values as "evaluative standards associated with work or the work environment by which individuals determine what is 'right' or assess the importance of preferences" (p.228).

Table 1 .
Classification of OCB by expectations of rewards and intra-or extra-behaviors

Table 2 .
Basic statistics and intercorrelations between variables