A mix-method investigation on acculturative stress among Pakistani students in China

Cao Shan; Mudassir Hussain; Ghulam Raza Sargani

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240103

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 22, 2020
20 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Sakamuri V. Reddy, Editor PONE-D-20-18965 A Mix-Method investigation on Acculturative Stress among Pakistani Students in China PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hussain, 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 03 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. 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, Sakamuri V. Reddy 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 2. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. 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If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript. [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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: Major points: 1. Importance. The authors might explain in detail the importance and implications of this study. Specifically, why does this paper focus on Pakistani students in China? Does this paper have generalizable implications on international students’ acculturative stress of students from other countries and/or studying in countries other than China? 2. Survey. More details about the survey are needed: when was the survey implemented, and how? What is the sampling approach? Is the sample representative (or biased)? How was the sample size determined? 3.Quantitative analysis. It is unclear about the method as there is no such a method called Principal Factor Analysis – I guessed that you meant Principal Component Analysis (PCA). It is also unclear why factor analysis is used to assess the relative importance of different stress measures, which I think is inappropriate. I would correlate the generated factor measure with other student-level and institution-level covariates to examine the heterogeneity in the acculturative stress. 4. Qualitative analysis. This paper has done a nice job using a mixed method study. However, there lacks compelling explanations on why the findings on perceived discrimination et al. differ between the quantitative and qualitative analyses. 5. The policy recommendations are a little bit disconnected from the evidence presented in this paper. There needs to be more evidence on the potential effects of the orientation lectures – just one quote from the interview is not enough. Minor points: 1. This paper is unfortunately poorly written. The authors might want to carefully edit the manuscript. There are many cases of grammar mistakes, repeated commas, and spaces between words. For example, “investigation” and “among” in the title should be capitalized. 2. Tables and Figures should be formatted. Labels should be added. 3. Some translation problems. For example,” the standard translation of Chinese global development strategy you mentioned should be “One Belt, One Road” rather than “Chinese Belt and Road.” Reviewer #2: 1. Literature review:Add some literature pertaining to Pakistani international students. The following literature can be seen 1. Noreen, Sehrish, Fan Wei Wei, Mehvish Zareen, and Sameena Malik. 2019. "The Intercultural Adjustment of Pakistani students at Chinese Universities." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 9 (3). 2. Su, Xiaoqing. 2017. "The Intercultural Adaptation of the Pakistani Students at Chinese Universities." Universal Journal of Educational Research 5 (12): 2236-2240. 2. In Research Questions, add a question pertains to role of language in cultural adjustment. 3. The study was conducted with purpose to explore the role of language, academic system and culture in the adjustment of Pakistani students in Chinese students. Keeping in view, add some content related to these areas n results /conclusion section. 4. In the results section, the current study can use the available literature on Pakistani students' adjustment in Chinese (referred above) to compare /support the findings of the current study. ****** 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 Reviewer #2: Yes:** Asma Bashir [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.0240103.r001
Revision 1
13 Aug 2020 Author Response Reviewer #1: Major points: 1. Importance. The authors might explain in detail the importance and implications of this study. Specifically, why does this paper focus on Pakistani students in China? Does this paper have generalizable implications on international students’ acculturative stress of students from other countries and/or studying in countries other than China? Response 1 Conferring to the statistics announced by Chinese Ministry of Education in 2020 and According to Asia Pacific Daily Report there are more than 30,000 Pakistani students who are studying in various Chinese universities, in 2020 which makes Pakistan the 3rd largest source of international students in the China. As the number of Pakistani students on Chinese campuses has risen, Currently, 6,156 Pakistani students are studying in Ph.D., 3,600 in Masters, 11,100 in Bachelors and 3,000 in Short Term Exchange Programs across China for their researches and immigrants adapt to a new cultural environment and on ways Chinese hosts can help the sojourners adapt to their new environment have become of great significance. [Su, Xiaoqing. 2017. "The Intercultural Adaptation of the Pakistani Students at Chinese Universities." Universal Journal of Educational Research 5 (12): 2236-2240]. 2. Survey. More details about the survey are needed: when was the survey implemented, and how? What is the sampling approach? Is the sample representative (or biased)? How was the sample size determined? Response 2 In the present study the simple random sampling was applied whereas in a simple random sample, every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected, which includes the whole population. To conduct this type of sampling, it can use tools like random number generators or other techniques that are based. Hence the sampling is the statistical process of selecting a subset (called a “sample”) of a population of interest for purposes of making observations and statistical inferences about that population. While Social science research is generally about inferring patterns of behaviors within specific populations. Therefore, we cannot study entire populations because of feasibility and cost constraints, and henceforth, we have selected a representative sample from the population of interest for observation and analysis. It is extremely important to choose a sample that is truly representative of the population so that the inferences derived from the sample can be generalized back to the population of interest. The improper and biased sampling is the primary reason for often divergent and erroneous inferences reported in opinion polls and exit polls conducted by different polling groups entirely on chance. 3.Quantitative analysis. It is unclear about the method as there is no such a method called Principal Factor Analysis – I guessed that you meant Principal Component Analysis (PCA). It is also unclear why factor analysis is used to assess the relative importance of different stress measures, which I think is inappropriate. I would correlate the generated factor measure with other student-level and institution-level covariates to examine the heterogeneity in the acculturative stress. Response 3 The abbreviation used as PFA was a clerical mistake and is replaced with PCA- Principal Component Analysis... Factor analysis is a technique used to reduce a large number of variables to a smaller number of factors. This technique extracts the largest common variance from all variables and puts them into a common score. As an index of all variables, we can use this score for further analysis. Factor analysis is part of the General Linear Model (GLM). The method also assumes the following assumptions: there is a linear relationship, there is no multicollinearity, related variables are included in the analysis, and there is a true correlation between the variables and the factors. There are several methods available, but the most commonly used is principal component analysis. Principal component analysis: This is the most common method used by researchers. PCA starts extracting the maximum variance and puts them into the first factor. After that, it removes that variance explained by the first factors and then starts extracting maximum variance for the second factor. This process goes to the last factor. 4. Qualitative analysis. This paper has done a nice job using a mixed method study. However, there lacks compelling explanations on why the findings on perceived discrimination et al. differ between the quantitative and qualitative analyses. Response 4 Quantitative variables were expressed as means and its related standard deviations while qualitative variables were presented in the form of frequency and percentages. Logistic regression analysis was done for severely stressed students versus others as a dependent variable with each of age, gender, Bachelor of Allied Health Sciences versus others, and living with parents versus others. Factor analysis techniques with varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization criteria was used to discover hidden factors for stress. Level of significance was set at 0.05 throughout the study. The findings after convergence of both quantitative and qualitative data, differ based on results which led authors to surprising facts, details have been added to factor (Perceived Discrimination) 5. The policy recommendations are a little bit disconnected from the evidence presented in this paper. There needs to be more evidence on the potential effects of the orientation lectures – just one quote from the interview is not enough. Response 5 A detail on recommendations based on the study findings has been added which can clarify policy recommendations, the evidences are taken from converged data analysis and findings. Minor points: 1. This paper is unfortunately poorly written. The authors might want to carefully edit the manuscript. There are many cases of grammar mistakes, repeated commas, and spaces between words. For example, “investigation” and “among” in the title should be capitalized. Response 1 The paper has been read carefully and made all the grammatical corrections such as commas and capitalizations etc. 2. Tables and Figures should be formatted. Labels should be added. Response 2 Tables and figures have been labeled. 3. Some translation problems. For example,” the standard translation of Chinese global development strategy you mentioned should be “One Belt, One Road” rather than “Chinese Belt and Road.” Response 3 Translations of terms from Chinese to English has been paid much attention, Chinese Belt and Road as mentioned has been replaced with One Belt One Road. Reviewer #2: 1. Literature review: 1. Add some literature pertaining to Pakistani international students. The following literature can be seen Response 1 The authors have tried their best to find related literature on Pakistani students academic, socio-cultural and psychological adaptation but there found very less pertaining to this particular group of international students in China as mentioned in literature review parts. The already cited 2 articles have been referenced already. Therefore, authors included literature done on general international students in China and-abroad. 1. Noreen, Sehrish, Fan Wei Wei, Mehvish Zareen, and Sameena Malik. 2019. "The Intercultural Adjustment of Pakistani students at Chinese Universities." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 9 (3). 2. Su, Xiaoqing. 2017. "The Intercultural Adaptation of the Pakistani Students at Chinese Universities." Universal Journal of Educational Research 5 (12): 2236-2240. 2. In Research Questions, add a question pertains to role of language in cultural adjustment. Response 2 A question (What is the role of language in causing acculturative stress?) has been added to Research Questions Part as suggested by Reviewer 2. 3. The study was conducted with purpose to explore the role of language, academic system and culture in the adjustment of Pakistani students in Chinese students. Keeping in view, add some content related to these areas n results /conclusion section. Response3. The conclusion section has been modified by adding content that is based on study results and-findings. 4. In the results section, the current study can use the available literature on Pakistani students' adjustment in Chinese (referred above) to compare /support the findings of the current study. Response 4 The authors tried to comprehensively portrayed the available literature on Pakistani students in China as well as literature available on other international students in China and abroad to provide a general understating on acculturation experiences of international students as general and Pakistani students in particular... Thank You for your valuable comments, the review was extremely useful and helped me refined my article and enhanced my learning. Sincerely Yours Dr Mudassir Hussain Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240103.r002
27 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Sakamuri V. Reddy, Editor PONE-D-20-18965R1 A Mix-Method Investigation on Acculturative Stress Among Pakistani Students in China PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hussain, 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. ACADEMIC EDITOR: As the reviewer-2 noted below, the authors are advised to address previous studies conducted on Pakistani students in China in revising the manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. 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, Dr. Sakamuri V. Reddy Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: (No Response) ******** 2. 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 #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. 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 #2: Yes ****** 5. 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 #2: Yes ****** 6. 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 #2: A part of literature review must address previous studying conducted on Pakistani students in China, and what these studies have explored. The same can be used to argue/support the findings in the discussion. However, all this is missing in the current article. ****** 7. 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 #2: Yes:** Asma Bashir [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.0240103.r003
Revision 2
17 Sep 2020 Author Response 1. A part of literature review must address previous studying conducted on Pakistani students in China, and what these studies have explored. The same can be used to argue/support the findings in the discussion. However, all this is missing in the current article. Response 1 Literature review section of the article has been modified and revised based on the previous literature found and suggested by respected reviewer 2. The below mentioned two empirical studies were referred to and cited in the literature review part as well as discussed, their findings in the discussion part of this study where needed. The two previous studies had found the factor like language barriers, new academic and social environment, cultural differences responsible for hindering intercultural adaptation but ultimately students learned effective coping strategies and student’s length of stay in China played a crucial role in overcoming the issues of anxiety and depression in China. Similarly, as this Mix Method Study mainly focuses on Pakistani Students acculturations and aims to see the level of stress due to acculturation among Pakistani students in China, mostly comes up with the similar findings and in concordance with the findings like language acquisition provides new students with confidence that enhance social and academic life of students in a cross-cultural environment. 1. Noreen, Sehrish, Fan Wei Wei, Mehvish Zareen, and Sameena Malik. 2019. "The Intercultural Adjustment of Pakistani students at Chinese Universities." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 9 (3). 2. Su, Xiaoqing. 2017. "The Intercultural Adaptation of the Pakistani Students at Chinese Universities." Universal Journal of Educational Research 5 (12): 2236-2240. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240103.r004
21 Sep 2020 Decision Letter - Sakamuri V. Reddy, Editor A Mix-Method Investigation on Acculturative Stress Among Pakistani Students in China PONE-D-20-18965R2 Dear Dr. Hussain, 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, Dr. Sakamuri V. Reddy Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240103.r005
Formally Accepted
24 Sep 2020 Acceptance Letter - Sakamuri V. Reddy, Editor PONE-D-20-18965R2 A Mix-Method Investigation on Acculturative Stress Among Pakistani Students in China Dear Dr. Hussain: 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. Sakamuri V. Reddy Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240103.r006

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