Elite sport hubs during COVID-19: The job demands and resources that exist for athletes

Samantha Marshall; Nicola McNeil; Emma Louise Seal; Matthew Nicholson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0269817

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 20, 2021
22 Apr 2022 Decision Letter - Andrew Philip Lavender, Editor PONE-D-21-40132Elite sport hubs during COVID-19: The job demands and resources that exist for athletesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Marshall, 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 address the comments by the reviewers addressing clarity of writing and references. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 06 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, Andrew Philip Lavender, PhD 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 the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: This research was supported by a La Trobe University and Basketball Australia Please note that 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: This study was supported by a PhD Industry Scholarship with Basketball Australia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. 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. [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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 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: Yes 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: No ****** 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 aim of the study was to qualitatively investigate the impacts of a hub model on athletes over time, and what job demands and resources existed for athletes based on the Job Demands-Resources Model. Overall this is a very interesting, well presented manuscript. It address a contemporary issue in elite sport, and more importantly, focuses on the lived experience of female athletes - an area seldom explored. The following comments are made in an effort to help the author further improve the quality of their manuscript. Introduction is well written, and provides a complete background of relevant literature to setup for the results and discussion. Page 4 Line 68 - suggest inclusion of a reference here Page 5 Line 94 - its not immediately clear what is/ are "burnout pathways" - suggest to provide some explanation of what this is, or alternatively improve clarity around terminology here (e.g., ... direct and indirect causes of burnout in athletes is minimal") Page 7 Line 146 Is there a reason the DISC model was not used in your study? Particularly as it was stated that it has been used in both elite and semi elite athletes Suggest to provide some further clarity around methodology. Page 9 Line 185 Was the maximum allotted time you had (30min) sufficient for data to reach a (theoretical) saturation point? Similar to the above query, did any new themes continue to emerge? Page 8 Line 192 Suggest to consider providing some exemplar questions used in the interviewing to improve transparency Results section is well laid out and use of subheadings clearly guide the reader Page 23 Line534-534 Suggest this sentence needs to be more clearly linked to data/ results section Reviewer #2: Thanks for the opportunity to read such an interesting paper. The only revision am suggesting realties to the lit review. there are many NEW papers that can be added, and most importantly, to discuss in relation to the paper's finds. Those include: Samuel, R. D., Tenenbaum, G., & Galily, Y. (2020). The 2020 coronavirus pandemic as a change-event in sport performers’ careers: conceptual and applied practice considerations. Frontiers in Psychology, 2522.‏ Pons, J., Ramis, Y., Alcaraz, S., Jordana, A., Borrueco, M., & Torregrossa, M. (2020). Where did all the sport go? negative impact of COVID-19 lockdown on life-spheres and mental health of spanish young athletes. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 3498.‏ Fiorilli, G., Grazioli, E., Buonsenso, A., Di Martino, G., Despina, T., Calcagno, G., & Di Cagno, A. (2021). A national COVID-19 quarantine survey and its impact on the Italian sports community: Implications and recommendations. Plos one, 16(3), e0248345.‏ Washif, J. A., Farooq, A., Krug, I., Pyne, D. B., Verhagen, E., Taylor, L., ... & Chamari, K. (2022). Training during the COVID-19 lockdown: Knowledge, beliefs, and practices of 12,526 athletes from 142 countries and six continents. Sports Medicine, 52(4), 933-948.‏ ****** 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:** Yair Galily [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269817.r001
Revision 1
25 May 2022 Author Response Thank you for these helpful comments and suggestions to improve our work. Similar to the Response to Reviewers, please see below each comment, and the action taken in response to that comment. 1. Page 4 Line 68 - suggest inclusion of a reference here Page 4 Line 75 now includes the reference: Bowes et al., 2020 (13) has been included. Text now reads: ‘…compared to their male counterparts (13).’ 2. Page 5 Line 94 - its not immediately clear what is/ are "burnout pathways" - suggest to provide some explanation of what this is, or alternatively improve clarity around terminology here (e.g., ... direct and indirect causes of burnout in athletes is minimal") Page 5 Line 101 has been changed to: ‘…the literature around the ways in which burnout develops in athletes is minimal, but that some athletes may experience burnout as a result of …’ 3. Page 7 Line 146 Is there a reason the DISC model was not used in your study? Particularly as it was stated that it has been used in both elite and semi elite athletes Whilst the DISC model, which focuses on ‘matching’ job demands with job resources to mitigate the demands, has been used in the sport context previously, in this study the authors made the choice to use the original JDR model instead. The goal of this preliminary study was to gain a broad understanding of the demands and resources that WNBL athletes experienced in the hub, not to match them. Thus, the DISC model was not appropriate as we did not seek to match demands and resources. 4. Suggest to provide some further clarity around methodology. a. Page 9 Line 185 Was the maximum allotted time you had (30min) sufficient for data to reach a (theoretical) saturation point? b. Similar to the above query, did any new themes continue to emerge? c. Page 8 Line 192 Suggest to consider providing some exemplar questions used in the interviewing to improve transparency Changed to, on Page 10, Line 192: “On average, each interview was 30 minutes duration, which, with the multiple sequential method and considering the limited time athletes had available away from their basketball duties and recovery time, allowed data saturation to be reached and no new themes emerged in the third interviews with participants.” The full interview guide is provided in the appendices, Page 31, line 700, to maximize transparency of our methods. 5. Page 23 Line534-534 Suggest this sentence needs to be more clearly linked to data/ results section. Changed to, at Page 24, Line 540: Taking athlete perspectives into account in this way, and giving them greater control and agency over their work, is also understood to be an essential cognitive resource…” Athlete control and agency is a key section of the results. 6. Samuel, R. D., Tenenbaum, G., & Galily, Y. (2020). The 2020 coronavirus pandemic as a change-event in sport performers’ careers: conceptual and applied practice considerations. Frontiers in Psychology, 2522.‏ Added into Page 3, Line 40: Indeed, the pandemic has been conceptualized as a ‘longitudinal, multifaceted, unpredicted, non-controlled change event’ which impacted athletic careers and had varying impacts on the mental health of athletes (5, 6). 7. Pons, J., Ramis, Y., Alcaraz, S., Jordana, A., Borrueco, M., & Torregrossa, M. (2020). Where did all the sport go? negative impact of COVID-19 lockdown on life-spheres and mental health of spanish young athletes. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 3498.‏ Added into Page 3, Line 40: Indeed, the pandemic has been conceptualized as a ‘longitudinal, multifaceted, unpredicted, non-controlled change event’ which impacted athletic careers and had varying impacts on the mental health of athletes (5, 6). 8. Fiorilli, G., Grazioli, E., Buonsenso, A., Di Martino, G., Despina, T., Calcagno, G., & Di Cagno, A. (2021). A national COVID-19 quarantine survey and its impact on the Italian sports community: Implications and recommendations. Plos one, 16(3), e0248345.‏ Added at Page 3, Line 63: Psychologically the pandemic increased demands on athletes, both elite and amateur, and women athletes were found to be more stressed and distressed than male athletes (14). 9. Washif, J. A., Farooq, A., Krug, I., Pyne, D. B., Verhagen, E., Taylor, L., ... & Chamari, K. (2022). Training during the COVID-19 lockdown: Knowledge, beliefs, and practices of 12,526 athletes from 142 countries and six continents. Sports Medicine, 52(4), 933-948.‏ Added in at Page 3, Line 54: The Covid-19 pandemic impacted athletes’ training and competition, affecting their fitness and skill maintenance and development, as well as their mental health (10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269817.r002
30 May 2022 Decision Letter - Andrew Philip Lavender, Editor Elite sport hubs during COVID-19: The job demands and resources that exist for athletes PONE-D-21-40132R1 Dear Dr. Marshall, 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, Andrew Philip Lavender, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269817.r003
Formally Accepted
27 Jun 2022 Acceptance Letter - Andrew Philip Lavender, Editor PONE-D-21-40132R1 Elite sport hubs during COVID-19: The job demands and resources that exist for athletes Dear Dr. Marshall: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Andrew Philip Lavender Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269817.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .