Novel participatory methods for co-building an agent-based model of physical activity with youth

Leah Frerichs; Natalie Smith; Jill A. Kuhlberg; Gretchen Mason; Damie Jackson-Diop; Doris Stith; Giselle Corbie-Smith; Kristen Hassmiller Lich

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241108

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 29, 2020
17 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Emma Louise Giles, Editor PONE-D-20-12547 Novel participatory methods for co-building an agent-based model of physical activity with youth PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Frerichs, 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. The reviewers have indicated minor changes to the manuscript, as detailed below. The manuscript was an interesting read, and well written, and I look forward to reading the final amended version. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 01 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. 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We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests [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 Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 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: Yes 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: Overall, the manuscript was written well. I would give a suggestion to add a definition for all of the terms that are included in the introduction such as: agent-based models and systems dynamics. Not everyone who reviews will be familiar with these concepts especially understanding the link with CBPR and engagement. Reviewer #2: This paper seeks to involve youth in the exploration and piloting of scripted activities intended to support the development of an agent-based model surrounding physical activity. The authors implemented a program consisting of six sessions, where students were asked what, when, where, with whom, and trends regarding physical activity via a variety of creative and facilitated activities. After each session, students were asked to indicate what they had learned in the session, as well as for their feedback on the sessions. The authors make a valid case towards developing a model surrounding physical activity that engages youth in the development. The research team was qualified to carry out the work – three researchers experienced with participatory modeling, two experienced community health leaders, and public health students, and youth. A clear strength of the paper is the well-designed, described, and appended curriculum. Session content is clearly described in a way that others could implement similar activities in their own settings. Methods are clearly aligned with the agent-based model approach. The graphs and plots clearly described and well-selected. One table that was unclear to me was “Table 1 – Example modeling and storytelling linkages”. Would it be possible to add more detail around how storytelling was incorporated? I did not find this table intuitive to understand after reading the text description. For example, does the content in the table represent hypothetical examples or samples from the project? The results section is also very short. Is there an opportunity to include a few examples of quotes to support the themes you’re describing? Were there variations among participants in how they experienced the themes you report? Also, the results section only presents the post-session surveys. Consistent with your stated purpose of the paper of piloting new scripted activities for agent-based models, should results also present findings related to the new scripted activities you developed? Are there any insights that the authors/project team gleaned from the artifacts themselves that would be worth reporting on to meet the stated purpose of the paper? Overall, the manuscript is technically sound and the data support the conclusions. All data is appended, and the authors also include figures and tables to illustrate examples of session artifacts. The authors did a thematic analysis of the summary evaluations, and no statistical analyses were completed. The manuscript is clear and easy to read. One suggestion to further improve clarity is to include definitions of ‘systems science’, ‘simulation modeling’, and ‘agent-based models’ when these terms are introduced early in the paper, to put the methods and findings in context. These terms may not be familiar to the reader. ****** 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. 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Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241108.r001
Revision 1
19 Sep 2020 Author Response We thank the reviewers for their thoughtful and positive reviews. We addressed each of the reviewers’ minor comments. Please see the responses below. Reviewer #1: Overall, the manuscript was written well. I would give a suggestion to add a definition for all of the terms that are included in the introduction such as: agent-based models and systems dynamics. Not everyone who reviews will be familiar with these concepts especially understanding the link with CBPR and engagement. RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer. We appreciate the suggestion, which was also raised by the other reviewer. We added brief definitions in the introduction to better orient the reader to these terms: “Systems science is an interdisciplinary field and approach to inquiry that focuses on understanding interrelated and interacting entities that form a unified whole. Simulation modeling, the process of creating and analyzing a digital prototype to emulate a real-life system, is a method often used in systems science.” Reviewer #2: This paper seeks to involve youth in the exploration and piloting of scripted activities intended to support the development of an agent-based model surrounding physical activity. The authors implemented a program consisting of six sessions, where students were asked what, when, where, with whom, and trends regarding physical activity via a variety of creative and facilitated activities. After each session, students were asked to indicate what they had learned in the session, as well as for their feedback on the sessions. The authors make a valid case towards developing a model surrounding physical activity that engages youth in the development. The research team was qualified to carry out the work – three researchers experienced with participatory modeling, two experienced community health leaders, and public health students, and youth. A clear strength of the paper is the well-designed, described, and appended curriculum. Session content is clearly described in a way that others could implement similar activities in their own settings. Methods are clearly aligned with the agent-based model approach. The graphs and plots clearly described and well-selected. RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for the thoughtful and positive summary of our research. One table that was unclear to me was “Table 1 – Example modeling and storytelling linkages”. Would it be possible to add more detail around how storytelling was incorporated? I did not find this table intuitive to understand after reading the text description. For example, does the content in the table represent hypothetical examples or samples from the project? RESPONSE: We added a stronger descriptive of how storytelling was incorporated, including a more detailed narrative that provides more context to Table 1: “…Table 1 highlights each of these linked concepts plus two examples of the storytelling links in application to agent-based models of physical activity. The first example applies the link to an agent-based model from the extant literature and the second illustrates the application from our pilot study with youth. The storytelling analogy was introduced in the first session and integrated into all following session materials. More specifically, we began our sessions with the concept of a storytelling ‘conflict’ and we elicited responses from the youth participants about what most ‘got in the way’ or ‘helped’ them to be physical active, which was used to refine the research questions. We also highlighted that agents in the model were like the characters of a story and used activities throughout the sessions to elicit more information from the participants about important qualities and factors that influenced (or were influenced by) their physical activity levels. The model environment was described as a story’s setting and participants were led through activities to identify and describe important locations. Finally, the model simulation was likened to a story’s plot. Finally, an existing simulation model was used to illustrate how simulation models result in outcomes over time and specifically highlight emergent dynamics of agent-based models.” The results section is also very short. Is there an opportunity to include a few examples of quotes to support the themes you’re describing? Were there variations among participants in how they experienced the themes you report? RESPONSE: Yes, we agree the section was very short. We added details to the section to support the themes as suggested. (p. 17-18) Also, the results section only presents the post-session surveys. Consistent with your stated purpose of the paper of piloting new scripted activities for agent-based models, should results also present findings related to the new scripted activities you developed? Are there any insights that the authors/project team gleaned from the artifacts themselves that would be worth reporting on to meet the stated purpose of the paper? RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We added a brief paragraph describing insights from the artifacts: “The artifacts from each of the activities provided important insights for different aspects of the model building process. For example, Graphs over Time artifacts revealed insights with implications for the model time scale while Mapping Important Locations provided insights with implications for environmental boundaries and agent-environment interactions within the model. More specifically, the Graphs Over Time artifacts revealed time periods with more (after school) and less (during school) variation in daily activity and Mapping Important Locations artifacts indicated a few key locations (school, home) most relevant to sedentary and physical activity. Furthermore, all artifacts provided insights relevant to data collection and analysis for future model parameterization. For example, the Decision Rules artifacts indicated that social interactions were likely influential in physical activity choices and more information was needed to operationalize the pathways and processes by which friends and family impact activity decisions on a day-to-day basis.” (p. 16-17) Overall, the manuscript is technically sound and the data support the conclusions. All data is appended, and the authors also include figures and tables to illustrate examples of session artifacts. The authors did a thematic analysis of the summary evaluations, and no statistical analyses were completed. The manuscript is clear and easy to read. RESPONSE: Thank you for these positive comments. One suggestion to further improve clarity is to include definitions of ‘systems science’, ‘simulation modeling’, and ‘agent-based models’ when these terms are introduced early in the paper, to put the methods and findings in context. These terms may not be familiar to the reader. RESPONSE: We appreciate this suggestion, which was also raised by the other reviewer. We added brief definitions in the introduction to better orient the reader to these terms: “Systems science is an interdisciplinary field and approach to inquiry that focuses on understanding interrelated and interacting entities that form a unified whole. Simulation modeling is the process of creating and analyzing a digital prototype to emulate a real-life system, which is a tool often used in systems science.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers 9_19_20.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241108.r002
9 Oct 2020 Decision Letter - Emma Louise Giles, Editor Novel participatory methods for co-building an agent-based model of physical activity with youth PONE-D-20-12547R1 Dear Dr. Frerichs, 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. I thank you for revising your manuscript and for considering PLOS ONE. Kind regards, Emma Louise Giles Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241108.r003
Formally Accepted
28 Oct 2020 Acceptance Letter - Emma Louise Giles, Editor PONE-D-20-12547R1 Novel participatory methods for co-building an agent-based model of physical activity with youth Dear Dr. Frerichs: 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. Emma Louise Giles Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241108.r004

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