PONE-D-21-40313Repeated information of benefits reduce COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy: Experimental evidence from GermanyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Burger,

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. When revising the paper, please consider the reviewers' comments listed at the end of this email.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 17 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,

Camelia Delcea

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. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

3. We note that Figure 2 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

a) You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 2 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license.  

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

b) If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful:

USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/

Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html

NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/#

Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

4. 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: 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: The paper is an experimental assessment using some 1,300 participants in Germany in May/June 2021, whether debunking vaccination myths, highlighting the benefits of being vaccinated, or merely sending vaccination reminders decreases hesitancy

This is simply a relevant and competent paper which gives important insights into the effectiveness of different interventions on vaccine hesitancy. The experiment is clearly explained, multiple robustness checks and checks for attrition and demand effects are conducted and presented as supplementary material. The study was pre-registered. In short: the authors know what they write about and investigate effectively and competently.

I only want to point at some minor issues:

1. Figure 3A: do you present percentages here, please make clear.

2. Is Fig3b a multiple regression, were independent variables all included at the same time?

3. Structure is a little unusual, presenting the hypotheses in the methods section. While I understand that the experiment is more clearly explained at this stage, I would advise to restructure and express hypotheses in a separate hypotheses/literature section before the methods.

4. Maybe use capital C’s when explaining 5C model for clarity.

5. On what scale was dogmatism assessed?

6. Briefly explain the platforms and software you use in one sentence, what is Respondi ? And what is ScoSci survey, is it a software?

7. Regarding your outcome measures, sometimes you talk about action, sometimes vaccination hesitancy and sometimes vaccination status. Choosing one specific term would make the text easier to read. Moreover, in measurement section, could you add the timing during which the dependent variables (intention and action) were assessed? Moreover, did you also assess vaccination intention before the treatment or only at the end of the survey? In other words, do you know whether there were differences in vaccination intention before the treatment?

8. In your sample, the older age-groups did already have the chance to get vaccinated as they were part of higher priority groups. This means that these older aged groups only consist of hesitant individuals, while the lower aged groups consist of a combination of non-hesitant and hesitant individuals. Could you conduct additional robustness checks limiting the sample to those that did not get the chance yet to get vaccinated or including interactions with age/priority groups and treatment?

9. There is much recent vaccine hesitancy material out there, also in PlosOne, also using 5C. For instance Wismans et al. (2021), Psychological characteristics and the mediating role of the 5C model in explaining students' COVID-19 vaccination intention, PlosOne, Aug 11;16(8):e0255382.

10. Avoid words like ‘now’. Imagine what that would mean if the paper is read in three year time.

Reviewer #2: Perhaps the chief concern I have with the paper – given its pre-registration, careful design and statistical analysis – and nuanced and transparent analysis of data – is the motivation articulated for the research and the specific interventions.

I know your interventions are also pre-registered and I will not suggest you change those or the hypotheses posed – they are what they are. But I do think you need to do a better job in outlining “state of the art” regarding (a) what we know about vaccine hesitancy in general, (b) what we know about vaccine hesitancy in relations to Covid-vaccination, and (c) also expand on what is known in the political-cultural-institutional setting of this research (Germany, or perhaps German-speaking countries in general, which you argue your results to generalize to). In the below I briefly expand on each of these pointers and why I see revisions needed:

1. Regarding (a) what we know about vaccine hesitancy in general. You cite two of the classic recent overview articles by Dubé and Schmid but you do not provide any generic overview of what is known in general population samples to explain large sources of variation in vaccine uptake or self-reported measures of vaccine hesitancy. I think this should be the basic starting point for any research on the topic. Since there are meta-analyses and literature reviews readily available, condensing that information into a new appendix (summarized shortly in the introduction) or a few sentences of new text in the introduction seems warranted.

2. Regarding what we know about vaccine hesitancy in relations to Covid-vaccination, your current outline merely focus on sociodemographics such as age, gender, and education (Edwards et al., 2021; Neumann-Böhme et al., 2020; Petersen et al., 2021; Ruiz & Bell, 2021). There are of course 100s if not more studies already available, and I certainly agree you cannot summarize all of these, but I am still somewhat confused about the focus solely on these sociodemographics, and why? (are they more generalizeable across countries? Do they explain more variation in general population samples, etc). A further motivation why solely summarizing current knowledge as consisting of these -and not other – factors is needed. I also think you should do a further cursory review looking specifically at large-N (many thousands) studies of general population samples that you judge are high quality studies, and considering including a few other central factors if you deem them relevant. I have no personal pet peeve here, but I am concerned about carefully summarizing “known knowns” and motivating variable foci.

3. Regarding what is known about vaccine hesitancy in relations in the political-cultural-institutional setting of this research (Germany, or German-speaking countries in general), some discussion is needed that (i) vaccine hesitancy is parly demographic (education, age, gender, etc (Schwarzinger et al., 2021; Troiano & Nardi, 2021)) partly psychological (perceptions, fear, personality types, etc (Gerretsen et al., 2021; Murphy et al., 2021; Wismans et al., 2021)) and also (interacting with both demographics and psychology) political-cultural-institutional in its determinants. For example, we know that adherents to specific religious beliefs, though traditions (in your context e.g. The Rudolf-Steiner tradition of Anthroposophy (Fournet et al., 2018)) and political (e.g. right-wing voters in the US and perhaps also in Europe (Ruiz & Bell, 2021)) ideologies express significant differences in vaccination intention and I would guess, also in vaccination uptake. I thus think you need to somehow mention that each country-culture may face rather unique challenges in vaccine uptake, for political-cultural-institutional reasons (in many countries also due to lack of medical infrastructure) and thus contextualize your research better. When you have done so, zooming in on what may be specific in the German-speaking context (there are general population surveys available such as (Graeber et al., 2021) would be proper contextualization of the current study, its design and interventions, and also in discussing the results.

I have carefully read the methods and analyses and have little to complain on. There is a large attrition cross survey waves but it seems to be random, and you handle it well. The statistical analyses are careful and transparent, and also nicely summarized graphically. I especially like the post-hoc tests and the nice graphical summarize of self-reported reasons in Figure 6. Also figure 7 – in summarizing potentially more useful interventions – is very illuminating. Well done!

One minor reservetation though is your dismissal of the rather established 5Cs model. You write that “Fig. 5 shows the effect each item of the 5Cs measured in the first wave has on self-reported vaccination behavior. Interestingly, the model controlling for other reasons such covid risk perception, emotional response, dogmatism, and anticipated regret has the same explanatory power (adjusted R2=0.35) indicating that these factors are already captured by the 5Cs”. I do not agree. Different covariates may explain equal / similar share of variance, even if they do not overlap much in the covariance matrix (the hold out predictors will just be in the residual). To firmly draw the conclusions that your variables covid risk perception, emotional response, dogmatism, and anticipated regret are already captured by the 5Cs variables, I would suggest a mediation analysis. Obviously they are correlated, but I do not understand how you draw the conclusion they are “already captured” by the 5C variables?

I hope you find my comments useful. Good luck in your hard worked research on this important topic!

REFERENCES

Fournet, N., Mollema, L., Ruijs, W., Harmsen, I., Keck, F., Durand, J., Cunha, M., Wamsiedel, M., Reis, R., & French, J. (2018). Under-vaccinated groups in Europe and their beliefs, attitudes and reasons for non-vaccination; two systematic reviews. BMC public health, 18(1), 1-17.

Gerretsen, P., Kim, J., Caravaggio, F., Quilty, L., Sanches, M., Wells, S., Brown, E. E., Agic, B., Pollock, B. G., & Graff-Guerrero, A. (2021). Individual determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. PloS one, 16(11), e0258462.

Graeber, D., Schmidt-Petri, C., & Schröder, C. (2021). Attitudes on voluntary and mandatory vaccination against COVID-19: Evidence from Germany. PloS one, 16(5), e0248372.

Murphy, J., Vallières, F., Bentall, R. P., Shevlin, M., McBride, O., Hartman, T. K., McKay, R., Bennett, K., Mason, L., & Gibson-Miller, J. (2021). Psychological characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Nature communications, 12(1), 1-15.

Ruiz, J. B., & Bell, R. A. (2021). Predictors of intention to vaccinate against COVID-19: Results of a nationwide survey. Vaccine, 39(7), 1080-1086.

Schwarzinger, M., Watson, V., Arwidson, P., Alla, F., & Luchini, S. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in a representative working-age population in France: a survey experiment based on vaccine characteristics. The Lancet Public Health, 6(4), e210-e221.

Troiano, G., & Nardi, A. (2021). Vaccine hesitancy in the era of COVID-19. Public Health.

Wismans, A., Thurik, R., Baptista, R., Dejardin, M., Janssen, F., & Franken, I. (2021). Psychological characteristics and the mediating role of the 5C Model in explaining students’ COVID-19 vaccination intention. PloS one, 16(8), e0255382.

**********

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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-40313 - vaccination - review.docx

PONE-D-21-40313R1Repeated information of benefits reduces COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy: Experimental evidence from GermanyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Burger,

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.

Specifically, please address reviewer 1's remaining concern.

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,

Jianhong Zhou

Staff 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.

[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: 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: Dear authors,

you dealt with all the comments.

The only minor thing missing may be a robustness check without the priority groups. you could with its results in a footnote.

good luck.

you did a fine job

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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.

Repeated information of benefits reduces COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy: Experimental evidence from Germany

PONE-D-21-40313R2

Dear Dr. Burger,

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,

Mohamed F. Jalloh, PhD, MPH

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

**********

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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

**********

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: You did a great job, congratulations.

**********

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

**********