Given that preliminary analyses suggested that the risk of death was not distributed proportionally across low, average, and high scores of General Activity and Conscientiousness, we tested models in which the two scales were trichotomized (32, 46). For General Activity, there were no significant differences in risk between participants with average as compared to low scores (HR = 0.916, 95%CI = 0.779–1.077), but the most active participants had about 23% lower risk of dying during the course of the study as compared to the least active participants (HR = 0.771, 95%CI = 0.614–0.967). Similarly, a model in which Conscientiousness was trichotomized indicated that there were no differences between average and low scorers (HR = 0.899, 95%CI = 0.757–1.067), but the most conscientious participants had about a 26% lower risk of dying during the course of the study as compared to the least active participants (HR = 0.738, 95%CI = 0.590–0.923).
