PONE-D-21-30816Testing both affordability-availability and psychological-coping mechanisms underlying changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemicPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. McBride,

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PLOS ONE

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: 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: This is my second time reviewing this article. As I stated the first time around, there is a lot to like about this paper, including a large sample size, interesting and important questions, a great summary of prior work on changes in alcohol consumption as a result of the pandemic, and public access to the data. I offered the following suggestions to strengthen the paper when I reviewed this the first time, and the authors were highly responsive to all of my concerns in this updated version. I have one more question, though. Typically, there are four drinking motives, and I wondered why the authors combined social and enhancement? Overall, I think this paper makes a nice contribution to the literature.

--Prior concerns that were adequately addressed--

1. The paper would benefit from a figure or figures. There are a lot of variables and paths being tested and a figure would help in clarifying the models and results.

2. I had a hard time seeing how the four aims mapped onto testing the “psychological” and “affordability-availability” mechanisms. For instance, wouldn’t it be illuminating to test whether drinking to cope motives explain the link between increases in variables like depression, loneliness etc and increases in drinking behavior as a result of the pandemic? Also, did the authors control for other motives in their analyses to see unique effects? Finally, it was unclear why some of the variables were included (e.g., paranoia, personality traits). It would be helpful to better motivate these in the introduction.

3. I understand that there are 3 waves of data, but it was unclear when some of the measures were assessed (this info is omitted for many of the measures in the methods section). It would be helpful to clarify which measures were assessed when and, in the case where measures were collected at multiple time points, an explanation is needed for choosing one particular wave over another.

4. Relatedly to my point above, the authors don’t seem to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of the data in their analyses. The title of the paper and hypotheses focus on changes in alcohol use, but the analyses don’t account for changes in drinking behavior pre- to post-pandemic, or this wasn’t clear.

5. The sample is described as being nationally-representative on page 9, but on page 20 a limitation is that the results can’t be generalized to all adults. Are the authors able to clarify?

6. The small decrease in at risk drinking is described as being “slight” in the results section and the confidence intervals overlap, but the difference is described as being significant in some places of the text. Are the authors able to clarify this, too?

7. It’s unclear if you were able to account for individuals who stopped drinking as a result of the pandemic in analyses.

8. I thought scores on the AUDIT-C indicative of hazardous drinking varied for men (score of 4) and women (score of 3). The authors used a score of 5, but perhaps I’m not aware of this convention.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Testing both affordability-availability and psychological-coping mechanisms underlying changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic

PONE-D-21-30816R1

Dear Dr. McBride,

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,

Gabriel A. Picone

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

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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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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 Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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