Presentation and validation of the Abbreviated Self Completion Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI): A preference-based measure for use in health-economic evaluations

Vivian Reckers-Droog; Maartje Goorden; Yifrah Kaminer; Lieke van Domburgh; Werner Brouwer; Leona Hakkaart-van Roijen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0238858

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 11, 2020
28 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Matthew J. Gullo, Editor PONE-D-20-03462 Presentation and Validation of the Abbreviated Self Completion Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI): A Preference-Based Measure for Use in Health-Economic Evaluations PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Reckers-Droog, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 11 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Matthew J. Gullo Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Additional Editor Comments: 1.) Please report group comparisons for EQ-5D-3L and SDQ in Table 2. 2.) Test-retest reliablity is only slight/fair for most scales and this should come through more clearly in the Discussion. While it may be that these scores reflect substantial therapeutic change occurring during the test-retest interval, this was not anticipated a priori in the study design. It may be that low reliability is a limitation of some of the included scales. Future research could seek to clarify the matter. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The current study addresses an important area of increasing prominence, that of accurate economic evaluation of mental health and substance use programs. The authors outline and validate a new measure intending to capture broad ranging treatment benefits of mental health interventions, that may be missed by existing scales. The authors clearly outline the scale development process. However, I am concerned about the lack of ethical approval to conduct this study. I note the authors said they did consult an IRB, did they provide approval for the research to be undertaken? If no I think further justification is needed. More specific comments are provided below to improve the manuscript: - The authors should consider mentioning the Child Health Utility 9-D in the introduction as a previous economic scale used frequently in mental health program economic evaluation and explain what their scale adds above this existing scales, which covers most of the domains in the current scale (except addressing substance use directly). On page 8 the authors should define what they mean by the terms 'soft' and 'hard drugs' The results section would be improved if the authors reported on the direction of the results, as well as significant differences. I note the authors conducted a bonferonni correction to control error rate however given the number of comparisons why was an ANOVA not used? - I was confused by the statement that a limitation of the study were the lack of questions in the retest questionnaire, i had thought the same questionnaire was delivered at retest? ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238858.r001
Revision 1
17 Aug 2020 Author Response Manuscript: PONE-D-20-03462 Manuscript title: Presentation and validation of the Abbreviated Self Completion Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI): A preference-based measure for use in health-economic evaluations RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS We thank the editor and reviewer for their positive remarks and the opportunity to submit a revised version of our manuscript. We have carefully revised the manuscript in view of the constructive and helpful revision suggestions as outlined in detail below. Please note that we respond to the journal requirements, editor, and reviewer #1 in the order of the received comments. In our response, we refer to the pages and line numbers of the Revised Manuscript with Track Changes. JOURNAL REQUIREMENTS 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response: As requested, we have revised our manuscript and file names to meet PLOS ONE’s style requirements. RESPONSE TO THE EDITOR 1. Please report group comparisons for EQ-5D-3L and SDQ in Table 2. Response: In line with the editor’s comment, we now also report comparisons between respondents who do (not) use substances and are (not) delinquent for the EQ-5D-3L and SDQ in Table 2. 2. Test-retest reliability is only slight/fair for most scales, and this should come through more clearly in the Discussion. While it may be that these scores reflect substantial therapeutic change occurring during the test-retest interval, this was not anticipated a priori in the study design. It may be that low reliability is a limitation of some of the included scales. Future research could seek to clarify the matter. Response: In line with the editor’s comment, we now discuss the reliability of four ASC T-ASI domains in the limitations section of the Discussion (page 13, lines 278-283). RESPONSE TO REVIEWER #1 1. The current study addresses an important area of increasing prominence, that of accurate economic evaluation of mental health and substance use programs. The authors outline and validate a new measure intending to capture broad ranging treatment benefits of mental health interventions, that may be missed by existing scales. The authors clearly outline the scale development process. However, I am concerned about the lack of ethical approval to conduct this study. I note the authors said they did consult an IRB, did they provide approval for the research to be undertaken? If no I think further justification is needed. Response: We thank the reviewer for the useful comments and the positive evaluation of our work. In line with the reviewer’s comment, we included a reference to the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act in the Netherlands, elaborated on our consultation with the Research Ethics Review Committee of the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management and on the procedure that we followed to obtain written as well as verbal consent of the respondents (see pages 4 and 5, lines 99-112). 2. The authors should consider mentioning the Child Health Utility 9-D in the introduction as a previous economic scale used frequently in mental health program economic evaluation and explain what their scale adds above this existing scales, which covers most of the domains in the current scale (except addressing substance use directly). Response: Following the reviewer’s comment, we now also mention the CHU9D as well as the EQ-5D-Y in the Introduction section and explain what the ASC T-ASI adds to these existing scales (see pages 2 and 3, lines 41-43 and lines 53-57). 3. On page 8 the authors should define what they mean by the terms 'soft' and 'hard drugs' Response: In line with the reviewer’s comment, we now give definitions of soft drugs and hard drugs on page 7 lines 183-185. 4. The results section would be improved if the authors reported on the direction of the results, as well as significant differences. Response: In line with the reviewer’s comment, we now also report the direction and statistical significance of the results in the Results section. 5. I note the authors conducted a Bonferroni correction to control error rate however given the number of comparisons why was an ANOVA not used? Response: We conducted multiple t-tests and controlled for the increased risk of a Type I error in order to obtain insight into statistically significant differences in ASC T-ASI tariffs between respondents who did/did not use alcohol, drugs, and medicines and between respondents who were/were not delinquent. An analysis of variances (ANOVA) would have provided insight into ‘whether’ there was a difference in tariff between these groups of respondents, but not exactly ‘where’ differences occurred. By conducting multiple t-tests, we found that the tariff was statistically significantly different between respondents who did/did not use alcohol and drugs and who were/were not delinquent, but not between respondents who did/did not use medicines. 6. I was confused by the statement that a limitation of the study were the lack of questions in the retest questionnaire, I had thought the same questionnaire was delivered at retest? Response: We thank the reviewer for raising this point. In line with the reviewer’s comment, we clarified the second limitation of our study on page 13 (lines 278-287) in the Discussion section. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238858.r002
26 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Matthew J. Gullo, Editor Presentation and validation of the Abbreviated Self Completion Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI): A preference-based measure for use in health-economic evaluations PONE-D-20-03462R1 Dear Dr. Reckers-Droog, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Matthew J. Gullo Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238858.r003
Formally Accepted
2 Sep 2020 Acceptance Letter - Matthew J. Gullo, Editor PONE-D-20-03462R1 Presentation and validation of the Abbreviated Self Completion Teen-Addiction Severity Index (ASC T-ASI): A preference-based measure for use in health-economic evaluations Dear Dr. Reckers-Droog: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Matthew J. Gullo Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238858.r004

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