PONE-D-21-24780Psychometric evaluation of measures in

the Native STAND study of American Indian Alaska Native YouthPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kelley,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 10 2022 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: https://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,

Richard Huan XU

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. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:

“This work was supported in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cooperative Agreement Number [5 U48DP005006-05].  “

Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now.  Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement.

Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: 

“No authors have competing interests.”

Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state ""The authors have declared that no competing interests exist."", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now

 This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

4. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

5. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section.

[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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: Thanks for the opportunity to let me review the manuscript. This study conducted a psychometric evaluation for a survey tool used in Native STAND study for American Indian/Alaska Native Youth. After review, I found some weakness in its results and discussion. Detailed comments can be found below.

1. Line 148-150, the authors stated that they added questions on multiple domains in the survey tool, why only focus on the four domains in the study? Inclusion of the other new domains could give a full picture of validity and reliability of the new tool, please consider to add them, or explain why these four domains are particular important.

2. Could the authors also report the average inter-item correlations (in addition to the range)? The details of the pairwise inter-item correlations and the corrected item-total correlations can be put in a supplementary file for audience who are interested to know the details of the tool. For the “α” in the results, please specify that they are Cronbach α (if not, please define this indicator).

3. From the results, I can only tell the scales have a reasonable internal consistency. How about the other aspects of the validity and reliability. For example, did the authors test the criterion validity of the survey tool?

4. Did the authors test the test-retest reliability of this tool, for all or a subset of the participants? It could evaluate the stability of the measurement through time, which is an important component of its psychometric property.

5. What are the implications of the reported EFA outcomes in implementation of this tool and future studies, or how can people make use of the EFA outcomes in practice? Is it possible to generate a composite score for each of the domains or subscales using the EFA outcomes? Please consider to add this into the discussion.

6. In the discussion, the authors indicated that “The participatory process used to develop the survey tool and implement the intervention with diverse AI/AN communities provides a framework for other communities and researchers moving forward”; therefore, could the authors describe the process to develop the survey tool in details, particularly how the content validity was assessed and improved?

7. How were the reliability and validity of the survey tool in AI/AN youth compared with general population, especially the self-esteem that is included in both old and new version of the tool? Please describe it in the discussion.

8. How would the authors comment on the generalizability/external validity of the updated survey tool among the youth in other ethnic minority groups?

Reviewer #2: Thanks for inviting me to review this interesting manuscript.

In general, the authors had done tremendous works to obtain the data. Below I provide comments concerns which, I think, can be clarified by the authors and are necessary for the publication of the paper.

Q1

Title

1. In the title, I think the use of “youth” may not appropriate, as sample of this study focused merely on high school students with a median age of 15 years.

2. “Psychometric evaluation” means the manuscript must present specific results of the survey, and analyze their differences. But, the “objective” of this study (line 112-114, page 5) was to validate the measurement properties of …. And on the other hand, as a research of reliability and validation, I don't think this study can reach that conclusion (more details given in Q3), so it would be more appropriate to call it a pilot study or a cross-sectional study.

Q2

The presentation of the manuscript is not rigorous enough, and some small mistakes are obvious.

1. As far as known from the manuscript, sample number of this research was 1456 exactly, but, line 44-45 in page 1, the author why said “more than”?

2. Page 2, line 48, authors represented in the manuscript that the factor of negative self-esteem was two-item, so, factor loading of “0.65” was redundant.

3. I doubt about “resilience” you have mentioned in the keywords list, there is less content related to it.

4. Page 9, line 204, item ratings here were all included in the factor of “positive self-esteem”, it should be clearly defined and stated.

5. Page 9, line 213, items of “history” and “native strengths” had the same rating of 3.8.

Q3

Some of the statistical procedures were not clearly explained or the methods were incorrectly used. Because of this issue, the conclusion that the measurement is a reliable and valid tool should be reconsidered or "tone-downed".

1. As presented in figure 1. and figure 3. , parallel analysis of “self-esteem” and “social support” may indicate one more factor for each scale; these were also confirmed by the unsatisfactory total variance explanation (e.g., 53.9% of self-esteem and 59% of community of community safety). Please clarify.

2. Page 6, Line 138-139, participants of this study were high school students, they could not represent “youth”, and we know that, there are fifty states in the U.S., how these 16 states sampled, it may need more clarification.

3. Page 8, line 189-190, does any item was removed based on the EFA, and its procedure, I didn’t see it.

4. Page 6, Line 139- 140: “Most of the sites were from rural communities and were from the western part of the United States.” Maybe the geographical distribution of the samples could be more elaborated in Table 1, for clarification.

5. page 6, line 140, “a baseline survey” was done prior to participation, however, there is no description for the baseline. Please elaborate.

6. Line 148-150, the study team added questions about many factors, but the Manu did not show their results, and if not, why you mention them here. Please clarify.

7. Table 1: The sample consisted of 1140 AI/AN, and 150 others. Regarding Race/Ethnicity data, if 1140+150=1290 students were included in this study, which does not equal No.= 87.8% and No.=12.2%? Please explain.

Q5

Part of “measures”

1. Questions generating methods of the four scale and the scoring rules were identical, I think, there is no need to repeat the same description four times.

2. Line 182, where is the “supplement 1.” I didn’t see it.

Q6

“Conclusion” of the study was just derived a “start point”, and very little valuable information can be drawn from the current statement for fellow researchers.

**********

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: Yes: Ling-ming Zhou

[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-21-24780R1Psychometric Evaluation of Protective Measures in Native STAND: A Multi-site Cross-Sectional Study of American Indian Alaska Native High School StudentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kelley,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 04 2022 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: https://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,

Richard Huan XU

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: Partly

**********

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: No

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’ revisions and responses are appreciated. I have two minor suggestions as below.

1. For corrected item-total correlations, the authors could consider to specify which items are the ones with maximum and minimum correlation coefficients in the text.

2. In the response to one of the previous comments on self-esteem scale, the authors stated that “Previous research reports that the negative or reverse coded (RV) items were not as reliable as the positively coded items” in Rosenberg's self-esteem scale. Is it one of the reasons why authors excluded three RV items in current version of the scale? If yes, please consider to add this reason and the citation in Method section.

Reviewer #2: Thanks for inviting me again to review this interesting manuscript.

The authors made large modification to the manuscript, in response to reviewers’ comments. I think the paper still needs little modifications to fully meet the requirements for PLOS ONE to publication

Q1

Line 233, in the part of “discussion”, authors are still using the expression of “AI/AN youth”, which I think may generalize the results of the study. Authors should limit their findings to the sample they investigated, and consistent with the title

Q2

In the part of “Conclusion”, the authors stated too much about the value of this research for fellow researchers, I understand the necessity of these statements, but in fact, in the “conclusion”, you only need to tell the readers what were the most important finding through the “results” and “discussion” briefly. So, suggestion of research direction for fellow researchers can be moved to the part of "discussion", which I think was too thin.

In conclusion, I have no other comments on this manuscript, if the authors could improve the details, I think it will be valuable research for readers.

**********

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: Yes: Lingming Zhou

[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.

Psychometric Evaluation of Protective Measures in Native STAND: A Multi-site Cross-Sectional Study of American Indian Alaska Native High School Students

PONE-D-21-24780R2

Dear Dr. Kelley,

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,

Richard Huan XU

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: