We also attempted to improve the conclusion validity by randomly choosing the subjects of both groups, thus promoting heterogeneous groups that were not correlated with the dependent variables.
The thoughtful and constructive comments of four reviewers are acknowledged as they improved the conclusions and overall quality of the paper.
Our results extend and improve the related conclusions in the literature.
Even though we employed random sampling method to choose CHCs to improve the representativeness, the conclusions of the study could not be extended to the population in general.
However, we believe that our remarks will further improve the above conclusion and contribute to more accurate elaboration of the results presented by Keum and Giovannucci (2014).
To improve the consistency in conclusions by comparing different approaches, we also analysed a fragment of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b for all morphs considered.
Contradictory data were purposely sought and examined to improve the trustworthiness of conclusions.
In future studies, a more objective rating of childhood maltreatment, using information from external sources, could improve the strength of conclusions.
First, by significantly scaling-up the number of genetic markers, genomewide approaches enhance the power and resolution for the above-mentioned applications and improve the reliability of conclusions (Steiner et al. 2013).
However, as group members are likely to judge the quality of their relationships based on many different types of interactions, future studies should consider including a measure of relationship value that incorporates a wider range of 'valuable' behaviors, such as agonistic support and food sharing, data which were unavailable for this population, to improve the strength of the conclusions drawn.
