PONE-D-21-18765

Grip Power Test: a New Valid and Reliable Method for Assessing muscle power in healthy adolescents

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huerta Ojeda,

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.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR:

Dear Authors,

two reviewers expert in the filed revised your ms and found some major points you should reply.

Please take into consideration only the methodological suggestions the reviewers pointed out.

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Emiliano Cè

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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: Yes

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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

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The present study aimed to determine the validity and reliability of a Grip W test in healthy adolescent since this test has been evaluated in other age groups such as elderly, adult population, university women and prepubertal children.

To test their hypothesis the authors used a sample of 21 adolescents that in my opinion is too small to validate and determine the reliability of the Grip W test even if in literature there were 2 studies that did the same. In addition, in order to test the validity and reliability of the Grip W test, I think is important to consider the gender differences and employ a sample balanced in the sex distribution. In your study you used a sample of 15 men and 6 women and you reported all the results together without distinctions. As a limitation, the authors declared that the participants reported being less physically active due to the COVID-19 pandemic scenario and I think that the fitness condition of the subject is an important aspect to consider when you tried to validate a test. So, I was wondering if your participants were active or inactive since I think is important to specify it when you validate a test. Furthermore, I don’t understand some points of the methodology. For example, how much time the participants must squeeze the manual dynamometer during the handgrip test? How much time the participants must displace the dumbbell vertically during the grip w test? In addition, adjust the number of repetitions per set according to the participant’s capacity and after that present the results all together without distinctions is not the right option to validate a methodology.

Reviewer #2: Huerta Ojeda et al.- Grip Power Test: a New Valid and Reliable Method for Assessing muscle power in healthy adolescents

Overview: The present study assessed the validity and reliability of grip power test in adolescents. I think that this work illustrates an argument very interesting, especially in a practical point of view: it concerns grip test, argument already and extensively studied, but it adds a novel test in a specific population as element of newness. However, there are some points that need some clarification and revision. See my specific comments below.

Lines 65-66: A brief paragraph about the importance and the purposes of GripW test) should be added. Please, specify in all paper what is the reliability assessed (inter-day, intra-day)

Line 88: Please, add the sample size calculation

Line 90: I suggest checking SD of the stature

Lines 92-93: I suggest replacing this information in result paragraph

Lines 105-106: Please, specify the warm-up procedures? Were they standardized or individualized?

Lines 106-108: Was the position choose based on a reference?

Lines 111-112: Was the handgrip test performed with both hands? (Please, specify before lines 112) If so, were randomized? Was performed a familiarized test? During the test was the participant verbally encouraged? Should the operator influence the measure?

Lines 111-112: Have the procedures been taken by some references?

Lines 116-117: Please, specify the warm-up procedures? Were they standardized or individualized?

Lines 130-131: How the authors verified this “Also, participants were asked not to include shoulder, elbow, and wrist movements in the execution of the test”?

Lines 150-151: Please, specify the reliability assessment if was intra-day or inter-day. It was not clear also considering the experimental protocol above written. Were the tests conducted at the same time?

Line 154: “are presented as means and standard deviations” should be “are presented as mean and standard deviation”

Line 155: Please, specify the criteria to validity assess.

Line 160: Please, report all the classification for CV and ICC

Line 162: Please, add a reference for r coefficients

Table 1: Please, specify what the authors meant with Load 1, 2, 3,,,,. Moreover, what the authors reported in tables 1 as test and retest? How they explained these higher SDs almost the same of mean?

Lines 186-188: The sentence in lines 184-186 should test the validity but not the reliability. Please, add a sentence for reliability results.

Line 248: Please, specify hot has been determined the muscle mass? To assess the quality of the muscle it is needed other measurements. Moreover, have been determined such as forearm length, hand length? Please, review the entire paragraph.

Lines 257-258: I suggest avoiding data in the discussion part.

Lines 259-260: Please, review accuracy and reliability terms because in these lines were used as synonymous

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Letizia Galasso

Reviewer #2: No

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Grip Power Test: a New Valid and Reliable Method for Assessing muscle power in healthy adolescents

PONE-D-21-18765R1

Dear Dr. Huerta Ojeda,

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.

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Kind regards,

Emiliano Cè

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I received the revised manuscript for review. I'm glad to see that the authors took reviewers' advice into consideration. The current manuscript is better than the one before it.

Reviewer #2: I appreciate all the corrections made my the authors. The article is now well described and written.

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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: Letizia Galasso

Reviewer #2: Yes: Marta Borrelli