PONE-D-21-27300Transition from anomie to delinquency in adolescence: profiles and associated factorsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. NADOLU,

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.

Although the first reviewer suggested the manuscript be rejected due to the difficulty in evaluating the methodology, both reviewers highlighted the strengths of the study and its value. So, instead of rejecting it, the authors have an opportunity to rework the manuscript and do the extensive rewriting the first reviewer indicates. In that case, it could undergo a second round of reviews.Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 19 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,

Pedro Vieira da Silva Magalhaes, M.D., Ph.D.

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. Please improve statistical reporting and refer to p-values as "p<.001" instead of "p=.000". Our statistical reporting guidelines are available at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-statistical-reporting.

3. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

4. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“The publishing of this article was supported by West University of Timisoara, International Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Human Rights, Timisoara, Romania.”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: ""The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.""

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

5. Thank you for stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript:

“The publishing of this article was supported by West University of Timisoara, International Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Human Rights, Timisoara, Romania.”

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:

“The publishing of this article was supported by West University of Timisoara, International Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Human Rights, Timisoara, Romania.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

6. 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.

7. 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 more 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 sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) 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. 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.

8. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well.

[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: No

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

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: 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

**********

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 research theme is relevant and in line with what is produced internationally in the area. However, the manuscript has serious problems, as indicated below, that make it impossible to fully evaluate (for example, poorly explained method) and its suggestion for publication. Some main points are presented below. However, due to the importance of the study and the robustness of the sample size, it is suggested that it be reworked for future submission.

It is not clear in the abstract the statistical analyzes that were carried out and what was presented as the objective of the study ("identify socio-cultural factors that may operate predictors of alienation and of deviant or even delinquent behavior"), is not aligned with what was presented as the main result ("Bucharest young people do not exhibit deviant behaviors or only to a minor degree, and that this is largely determined by a positive environment in terms of social relations, economic status, and level of culture.") . Furthermore, what is presented as the main result in the abstract is not congruent with the data presented in the manuscript, since 20% of the sample presented a type of behavior classified as “delinquency” and 12% as “high deviance” (Table 8).

In the introduction, the concepts of anomie and alienation are well defined and with a presentation of previous literature. Despite this, other variables that are addressed in the article (the risk factors assessed, such as parental monitoring, peer support, substance abuse, etc.) are not discussed based on the literature.

The method would require a characterization of the participants (age and gender) and a presentation of the psychometric parameters of the instrument adopted. In addition, more detail on the statistical analysis used would be necessary, describing the complete analysis process (data processing, choice of variables, descriptive statistics performed, procedure for carrying out logistic regression). As there is no description of the analysis procedure, it is not possible to know and to assess the rigor used in the process.

In the results, there is a presentation of definitions of scale variables and their composition that should be presented as “measures” in the method. There is no alignment between what is proposed to analyze the method and the analyzes presented in the results.

In the discussion, there is not enough discussion with literature data about the results found and the conclusions are not aligned with the results presented.

Thus, it is suggested to reject the scientific article since with little clarification of the method, a rigorous review is not possible. Furthermore, the conclusions and discussions are not aligned with the presented result.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors,

First of all, I would like to emphasize the relevance of this study, which presents predictors of the transition from anomie to delinquency. Although the study was conducted at a local level, with young Europeans from Bucharest, Romania, it reflects the conditions experienced by many other populations and helps us to think micro- and macro-structurally about public policies that favor care and attention to situations of risk and delinquency.

I would like to list some points that drew my attention and that I believe deserve being reviewed aiming to improve the quality of this study:

1) I suggest that the title, “Transition from anomie to delinquency in adolescence: Profiles and associated factors”, be reconsidered, because the study does not exactly reflect the profile of young people, but rather the factors that associate the transition from anomie to delinquency.

2) In the Introduction, the authors refer to some studies that correlate the predictors of what could potentially trigger a transition from anomie to delinquency; however, none of them discuss the social or structural conditions that potentiate such situation. In developing countries, for instance, macroeconomic conditions prevail over individual and even community conditions regarding the experience of unruly and deviant adolescence. I believe it is important to emphasize this comparative aspect, which would strengthen the study and allow its scope to be expanded beyond subjective conditions and personal inabilities to comply or not with societal rules.

3) This study also sought to respond to the following question: “What are the most relevant factors associated with juvenile delinquency in Bucharest, Romania?” To this end, the authors resourced to a 17-item questionnaire. To better contextualize the research, I suggest that the authors include some information, if available, on the state of the art of juvenile delinquency in Romania and, in particular, in Bucharest, because only the data presented do not show whether delinquency is high or low among young Romanians.

4) The Methodology does not clearly present the profile of the study participants: there is need to explain, for example, the profile of the young people who responded to the questionnaire: age group, sex and gender identity, social class, ethnicity, in order to better understand the eligibility criteria of the study.

5) The Results and their statistical analysis faithfully demonstrate and answer the research question.

6) Regarding the Discussion, there is need for a more comprehensive analysis of both the results found and the findings of the literature that support the arguments. How does the theory of anomie, proposed by Merton (1968), assists us with thinking about the transition from anomie to delinquency in young Romanians? What pre-existing conditions do these young people have that motivate them to go beyond culturally and socially determined limits? Making good use of the studies and theories presented here could better support the evidence of the results.

7) In addition, the authors state that the amount of time spent on communication and information technologies (CIT) by today's youth emerges as a predictor of the high level of deviant behavior, but not necessarily of delinquent acts. To support this argument, it is important to review communication theories on the excessive and abusive use of CTI among young people.

Finally, I would like to say that I am grateful for having had the opportunity to read this study.

Sincerely,

**********

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

[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.

Social predictors of the transition from anomie to deviance in adolescence

PONE-D-21-27300R1

Dear Dr. NADOLU,

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,

Pedro Vieira da Silva Magalhaes, M.D., Ph.D.

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: 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: 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: First, I would like to emphasize and congratulate the extensive review work that the authors have carried out. I consider that all the requested changes have been made and that the work is ready for publication.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript presents, after peer review, adequacy to publishable standards. In addition, new elements were incorporated into the text, which facilitates the understanding of the study. I'm a favor of publication.

**********

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