J6 
dominion (r =.44, p<.001; r =.22, p <.001), with significant correlations of both verbs with each 
of the component verbs of dominion (claim, control, keep). However, for the ferry passengers 
(n=75), have correlated with dominion (r=.43, p <.001) and each of the component verbs, but 
possess did not correlate with dominion (r=.15, p =.10), nor with any of the component verbs of 
dominion. To speculate, it may be that the university respondents were more aware of the legal 
usages of “possession” than were the ferry respondents. 
The second task of the analysis was to examine the reliability of the materialism and 
personality scales for the two samples. As shown In Table §, Cronbach alpha coefficients for 
Belk’s scale of Materialism and for the three subscales which comprise it were genital lower 
and more variable than those found by Belk (1984; 1985) with U.S. respondents. This was 
particularly true of the Possessiveness and Envy subscales, which were therefore not included 
in subsequent correlational analyses with verbs and PRF scales. Differences between the scale 
reliabilities reported by Belk (1984; 1985) and those found here may be due to differences in the 
questionnaire embeddings of the Materialism scale in the two studies, or to differences in the 
research settings (e.g. university offices versus family car), or perhaps to cultural differences 
between Utah and Eastern Ontario in the construct of materialism. Item analysis did not suggest 
any particular items as being at fault for the low reliability coefficients. 
Nevertheless, as shown in Table 5, mean scale scores for the two samples were grossly 
comparable to one another and to those reported by Belk (1984; 1985a) for his Utah samples. 
Using dummy codings for sex (0 = female, 1=male), being male correlated with being 
nongenerous for the student sample (n=185, r=.16, p <.05) and for the ferry sample (n=81, 
r=.34, p=.001). In both groups, Materialism decreased with age (r=-.14, p <.05; r=-.21, p <.05), 
but of the subscales, only for Envy (r=-.20, p <.001; r=-.40, p<.001). In both groups, Materialism 
was sensitive to Desirability-responding (r =-.32, p <.001; r=-.37, p<.001), but again only on the 
Envy subscale (r=-.44, p<.001; r=-61, p<.001). 
For the 187 students and the 86 ferry passengers completing at least 14 items on each of 
the 10 PRF personality scales, alpha coefficients ranged from .50 to .88, and from .50 to .89 
respectively. As shown in Table 6, these were generally comparable to PRF Form E reliability 
data reported by Jackson (1967/1984, Table 24). Table 6 also shows that mean scale scores and 
standard deviations for the two samples were grossly comparable to one another and to means