PONE-D-20-25501

Effects of physical activity and exercise on well-being in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Filgueiras,

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.

Whereas all three reviewers highlight that the manuscript covers an important topic and uses an interesting approach, they however also raise a number of substantial concerns regarding the clarity of the writing and the information around methodological and data acquisition and analyses issues. If you decide to resubmit a revised version you should carefully consider all the reviewers’ suggestions.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 07 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:

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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Anke Karl

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments and the Founding Source Sections of your manuscript:

"Authors thank the support of the

Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES) and the Fundacao

Carlos Chagas de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) to conduct this

study."

"The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development under Produtividade

PQ-1A Grant from the author JLF funded this study."

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

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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 manuscript covers a very interesting topic and the approach used by the authors is quite robust. However, the way it is written and structured makes it hard for the reader to follow. In addition, some information needs to be better explained by the authors. Detailed comments:

- The manuscript would be both more compelling and useful to a broad readership if the authors moved beyond providing a descriptive narrative of the data analyzed in an assembled way and be more forthright and clear in presenting the instruments and the results (maybe using tables).

- The number of acronyms should be considerably reduced, as it makes the text hard to follow, particularly in the methods section. By the way, the acronym of Positive Affect should be PA and not AP.

- It is not clear if all participants answered all the questionnaires’ items.

- The way results are presented is rather confusing: subtopics should be added to direct the reader.

- The correlation between the sociodemographic data collected and the instruments should be clearer and better explored.

- A "Limitations" section at the end of the "Discussion" and as well as a “Conclusion” section should be included. In the “Conclusion” section, policy implications of the results achieved should be added.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is of general interest and conducted with a rigorous research approach. I am satisfied with the work done by the authors. I have only the following minor comments to rise.

ABSTRACT

- The authors reported the acronym SWB without having defined it first.

- Please provide age of the sample and gender distribution.

- Why did the authors only report strength training results? Authors should better report the main findings found.

INTRODUCTION

- The introduction is too long and dispersed. Authors should streamline it and make it converge on the topics related to the study (for example, the description of the symptoms of COVID-19 or the difference between symptomatic and asymptomatic is not necessary for the purpose of the study).

- Some sentences are not supported by bibliographic sources (for example the following sentence: “However, the same physical distance, which protects COVID-19 from spreading, may have an impact on mental health and the well-being of the population.” For the latter statement I suggest considering the following references:

1) Giustino, V. et al. Physical Activity Levels and Related Energy Expenditure during COVID-19 Quarantine among the Sicilian Active Population: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey Study. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4356.

2) López-Bueno, R. et al. Health-Related Behaviors Among School-Aged Children and Adolescents During the Spanish Covid-19 Confinement. Frontiers in paediatrics 2020, 8, 573.

DISCUSSION

- In the discussion, same sentences concerning the PAWEC should be reported in the methods section (for example the following sentence: “the scale as a whole showed Cronbach’s alpha above 0.70, which was considered enough to assume good internal consistency. The instrument, then, proved to be reliable and well structured”).

- Before describing the results found, the authors should report what their hypothesis was.

- The authors failed to report strength and limitations of the study. Among the latter, the self-reported based instrument should be mentioned.

Reviewer #3: 1. The date was collected for March 31st and April 2nd, 2020. Thats perhaps a very small time for a study of this magnitude to be conducted

2. the word SWB ?? is present in the abstract, what does it stand for ?

3. The sentence "However, it is unclear whether people in quarantine are able to engage in such frequency and regularity of exercise and if this practice is enough to provide SWB." Was it also measured/investigated in the present research.

4. From the methodology I feel three Instruments were administered to the same population , Do the authors think RANOVA/MANOVA should had been used to control type 2 errors ?

5. Another question that arises is how the author controlled the Intensity or administered the intensity for exercises for the participants during the pandemic , as specific intensity will produce specific results

6. Refer Can moderate intensity aerobic exercise be an effective and valuable therapy in preventing and controlling the pandemic of COVID-19?Med Hypotheses. 2020 Oct; 143: 109854. and Physical exercise as a tool to help the immune system against COVID-19: an integrative review of the current literature, Clinical and Experimental Medicine (2020). Should be included and discussed in the article.

7. Limitations if any

8. I think there is a need to revise the need or gap for the study which needs to be more emphatic so does the conclusion.

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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: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: DR SNEHIL DIXIT

[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.

PONE-D-20-25501R1

Effects of physical activity and exercise on well-being in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Filgueiras,

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.

reviewers pointed out that the new version of the manuscript is of better quality, but they still highlight points that require the authors' attention, for example:

- language / English must be revised

-bibliographic references

- study limitations 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 11 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,

Flávia L. Osório, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

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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: 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: No

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. 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 authors have improved the manuscript taking into account most of my previous comments. However, there are important issues that need to be considered before publication. First, the English in the present manuscript is not of publication quality and requires major improvement. There are several mistakes and sentences not completed, which make the manuscript difficult to read. I therefore suggest that the authors get editing help from someone with full professional proficiency in English. In addition, some references are numbered in the text and others are not. Some references mentioned in the text are also missing in the bibliography section. Finally, the conclusion needs to be improved with the limitations of the study (the authors only introduced an unfinished sentenced on this) and possible paths for future research.

Reviewer #2: Overall, it is a piece of general interest and rigorously carried out. The methodological approach and statistical analysis are appropriate, and the conclusions represent a reasonable extension of the results. I suggest minor revisions before the acceptation.

The abstract should contain information on the study design.

Some references are missing in the introduction. For example: “On March 11th, 2020, Covid-19 was characterized by … as a pandemic” ; “However, the same physical distance, … and the well-being of the population” ; “In a 2004 study of 129 Canadian people … were observed” ; etc.

In the statement “However, it is unclear whether people in quarantine are able to engage in such frequency and regularity of exercise and if this practice is enough to provide SWB”, please consider the following reference about the practice of physical activity during the Covid-19 pandemic: “Di Stefano V, et al. Significant reduction of physical activity in patients with neuromuscular disease during COVID-19 pandemic: the long-term consequences of quarantine. J Neurol. 2021; 268(1):20-26. doi: 10.1007/s00415-020-10064-6.”

In the procedures authors should define the study design.

The authors stated that "Volunteers were recruited via authors’ social media and messaging smartphone apps". Since methods should be replicable, sample recruitment information should be better reported.

In the instruments paragraph, authors stated that “Three instruments were used online and sent in a single form of Google Docs”. However, it is not clear whether the link received by the participants to answer the questionnaire (as described in the procedures paragraph) was the Google Docs form or if, instead, only the answers were sent to Google Docs.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: 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.

Effects of physical activity and exercise on well-being in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

PONE-D-20-25501R2

Dear Dr. Filgueiras,

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,

Flávia L. Osório, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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: 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. 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 authors have addressed most of my previous remarks. In my opinion, the paper is now ready to be published.

Reviewer #2: In my opinion the manuscript was improved according to Reviewers' indications. For these reasons it can be accepted for pubblication in the current form.

Best Regards

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No