I do not understand why that would be the case as the only input involving the relationship of the data is the determinant of the correlation matrix. For what you suggest to be true, the non-normality of the data would have to introduce correlation.
If what you are saying is true, we would expect the p.value in uncorrelated samples to be significant more or less often than 5 percent of the times (dependent on what exactly you mean by sensitivity) when we use a random sample of highly skewed gamma and Poisson distributions as data. At least for two data columns the example below does not suggest that this is the case. Daniel set.seed(4785) cor.data<-NULL chi.square<-NULL p.value<-NULL for(i in 1:1000){ y<-rgamma(100,1,2) x<-rpois(100,2) data=data.frame(x,y) cor.data[i]=cor(data,use='pairwise.complete.obs')[1,2] chi.square[i]=-( (dim(data)[1]-1) - (2*dim(data)[2]-5)/6 )* log(det(cor(data,use='pairwise.complete.obs'))) p.value[i] = 1-pchisq(chi.square[i],(dim(data)[2]^2-dim(data)[2])/2) } hist(p.value) quantile(p.value,prob=0.95) ted.harding-3 wrote: > > To add to Jeremy's comment below: The Bartlett test is very > sensitive to non-normality in the data, so can readily give > "significant" results even for non-correlated data. > > Ted. > > On 18-Jun-11 06:47:52, Jeremy Miles wrote: >> cortest.bartlett() in the psych package. >> >> I've never seen a non-significant Bartlett's test. >> >> Jeremy >> >> >> >> On 17 June 2011 12:43, thibault grava <thibault.gr...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> Hello Dear R user, >>> >>> I want to conduct a Principal components analysis and I need to >>> run two tests to check whether I can do it or not. I found how >>> to run the KMO test, however i cannot find an R fonction for the >>> Bartlett's test of sphericity. Does somebody know if it exists? >>> >>> Thanks for your help! >>> >>> Thibault > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@wlandres.net> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 > Date: 18-Jun-11 Time: 09:48:13 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Bartlett-s-Test-of-Sphericity-tp3606765p3607995.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.