PONE-D-21-07536

Contextualising COVID-19 prevention behaviour over time in Australia: Patterns and long-term predictors from April to July 2020

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ayre,

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 authors have presented a well-written piece of evidence regarding COVID-preventive behaviors in Australia over the months of April to July, 2020. They have attempted to describe the changing pattern of these behvaiors over time and their predictors. The comments and concerns are appended below. Please address all the comments on a point-by-point basis.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 10 2021 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Arista Lahiri, MBBS, MD

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. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions.

In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

3. Please amend either the abstract on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the abstract in the manuscript so that they are identical.

4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information

Additional Editor Comments:

The authors have presented a well-written piece of evidence regarding COVID-preventive behaviors in Australia over the months of April to July, 2020. They have attempted to describe the changing pattern of these behvaiors over time and also sought to understand the role of certain behavioral predictors. However, there are certain concerns and the article needs further clarification on the following issues:

1. Sampling of participants and representativeness of the sample. The authors must also revise their title, because I am afraid the findings do not represent the whole Australian population, rather only a digitally advanced group of people were studied. This part needs clarification and requisite modifications.

2. Considering the study-tool to be a non-standard one, detailed validity and reliability information is needed.

3. The non-response and drop out in the study appears to be high. Did the authors compare the basic characteristics between the responders and non-responders?

4. Among the respondents in different months, were they the same respondents as from previous months, or were there any new respondents? Authors should make this part clearer. Because based on this the analytical strategy may change.

5. The authors have taken into account several COVID-preventive behaviors and based on the responses they have grouped the behaviors in two major themes i.e., distancing and hygiene. Now, in the regression models, the authors have developed separate models for every month of survey. The variables in the regression analyses I feel, may suffer from endogeneity. Authors may please look into it.

6. In order to understand trend or patterns it might have been better to develop a regression model with time as a predictor. In the current study, a multi-level model can be used to make the findings more robust, crisp, and comprehensive. Though I have reservation regarding use of logistic regression only, as the method of analysis in a study where the authors aimed to see the patterns and the predictors, still the use of other applicable or rather more appropriate models is dependent upon the data collection and sampling itself (refer point 4).

7. In abstract authors may please follow this format: background, objectives, methods, results, conclusion.

[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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: This study highlights the importance of considering how patterns of COVID prevention behaviours change over time, and suggests that different policy approaches especially risk communication approaches, may be needed for different behavioural categories in different stages of the pandemic.

The data has been elaborately analysed and presented. Appropriate statistical analysis been performed supporting the conclusions drawn.

The manuscript is written in a lucid and unambiguous form which is very comprehensible.

As a future research direction, the authors could consider analysis of complexity of performance of the seven precautionary behaviors along with their contextual facilitators and barriers.

Reviewer #2: Overall paper is good.

1. Sample size seems low

2. Citation format issue on page 15 Betsch, Schmid, Heinemeier, Korn, Holtmann and Böhm (30)

3. NSW and the Australian Capital Territory is over represented in collected data otherwise sampling is very good.

4. On page 22, figure 2 missing on page but included later

5. Only overall behavior over time is shown in graphs, not behavior/perceptions separated by demographics.

6. Paper doesn't point out if there were other efforts made to get data from people outside Facebook(email marketing, ads on Youtube, etc) but does point out that sampling methods could affect results.

Reviewer #3: I have 2 main concerns with the work:

1) accuracy of self reporting - i am unsure of how accurate self reporting for these behaviours really is as an assessment tool

2) sample - considering that Australia has roughly 25.3 million people, a sample size of 1834 does not seem representative of the overall population. Moreover the sample encompasses a majority of highly educated women, which again reinforces that the sample is very selective compared to the national australian estimates.

The article is well written but i question the significance of the results based on such a small and non-representative sample and I because of that I don't think these results can be extrapolated to the australian population at large.

**********

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: Yes: Madhumita Dobe

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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.

Contextualising COVID-19 prevention behaviour over time in Australia: Patterns and long-term predictors from April to July 2020 in an online social media sample

PONE-D-21-07536R1

Dear Dr. Ayre,

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,

Arista Lahiri

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have put in great amount of work. Upon revision the article is now scientifically Acceptable.

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The comments made previously have been addressed, including mentioning the limitations of the data collection process and related issues regarding the relatively small sample.

**********

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 #1: Yes: Madhumita Dobe

Reviewer #2: Yes: Muhammad Sohaib Arif