You have the data from 250 people who completed a 6-item job-satisfaction scale. The response options for the items on this scale ranged from 1-Strongly Disagree to 7-Strongly Agree. Consider the summary statistics for the first three items. Item 1: Mean = 3.063, SD = 0.910 Item 2: Mean = 2.460, SD = 0.670 Item 3: Mean = 1.849, SD = 0.930 Covariance between Item 1 and Item 2, COV = 0.238. Covariance between Item 1 and Item 3, COV = 0.178. Covariance between Item 2 and Item 3, COV = 0.231. Imagine that you added the values in these three columns together to form a new column. What is the variance of that column?

(a) 2.342 (b) 3.436 (c) 2.354 (d) 4.443