PONE-D-21-20917

Relationship between Demoralization of the College Student with their Individual- and Social-Oriented Self

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Fan,

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.

I went over the manuscript and agreed with the two reviewers to recommend major revision for the following reasons:

• The introduction needs to be revised. For example, there is quite more words on the description of depression.

• The theoretical and conceptual value of this paper is unclear.

• It is not very clear how this paper builds from the extant literature and fills the important gap in this field.

• The data collection part is missing - how to collect the data for the study and when.

• The conclusion section should consider the limitations of the research, causes and solutions, etc.

• End the discussion elucidating the important contribution to the literature.

• Reference needs to be improved, such as formatting needs to match, and selection of more literature from regions other than Taiwan may be more representative.

We hope that these recommendations, when considered, will improve the quality of manuscript notch higher. We therefore request you to revise the paper following my and reviewer's recommendations.

Thanks so much.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Fraide Agustin Ganotice, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript is interesting with significant volume of informations. The research instruments are adequate for study organisation and qualitative data. The results and discussions should appear to be related with their individual social oriented self. The conclusions are relevant for the topic. I consider that the authors do a good job and the manuscript and the subject matter is very interesting for the journal.

1. It seems that regression analysis is necessary to analyze the purpose of the study. Correlation analysis alone is problematic in interpreting the relationship between variables.

2. Previous studies are mainly Taiwanese journals. If you present a foreign journal together, it will be a better thesis.

3. The bibliography presentation in the text must be matched. Please match either year or number according to the academic form.

Reviewer #2: Background

1. Other than the meaning of life, the authors should also elaborate more on how "low individual- and low social-oriented self" would influence/inform other components of demoralization (e.g, self-affirmation, courage and tenacity, emotional distress).

Methods/Materials

2. The authors should mention how the total scores of demoralization, individual- and social-oriented self were computed.

3. The authors should indicate if there are any previous studies supporting the validity of the two scales.

Data Analysis

4. Is there any reason(s) why the mean scores of the participants' individual and social orientation were used as the cutoff point? Given that the mean scores of "Independence" and "Situational self" were relatively high (over 4), low individual orientation/low social orientation groups may contain students who were high in independence and situational self.

5. The authors should mention the statistical procedure used to rank the individual- and social-oriented cultural values.

Results

6. Table 2 should report the descriptive statistics of the total scores of demoralization, individual- and social-oriented self. Similarly, table 4 should report the correlations between the total scores of demoralization, individual- and social-oriented self.

7. Given that the study hypothesized that "low individual- and low social-oriented self" would inform the development of demoralization, it is not clear that the findings of "competition" and "social sensitivity" contradicted the hypothesis.

8. Were any variables considered as possible co-variates?

Discussion

9. A discussion of limitations of the study should be included.

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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

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Relationship between Demoralization of the College Student with their Individual- and Social-Oriented Self

PONE-D-21-20917R1

Dear Dr. Fan,

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,

Fraide Agustin Ganotice, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript titled "Relationship between Demoralization of the College Student with their Individual- and Social-Oriented Self” to PLOS ONE. Two reviewers provided their take on the revised version and suggested acceptance. I am here to make a recommendation of acceptance too.

Before the paper’s publication, I hope you can consider the comments and suggestions given by the reviewers to improve your final manuscript.

Thanks so much.

Respectfully yours,

Fred Ganotice

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have been very responsive in responding to my comments, and my only remaining suggestions are minor, and I leave them to the discretion of the editor and authors.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to review this important research.

1. Consider adding more literature review and previous research findings on “unintegrated-self” (low in both individual- and social-oriented self) in the Introduction, as this is the most vulnerable group to demoralisation suggested in this research.

Reviewer #3: The research is oriented to the study of a relevant topic for cultural psychology. According to the structure of the manuscript: (1) The research problem is clearly described, making a coherent construction of the object of study, (2) The references used are relevant, (3) A methodological strategy adequately supported by the theory is proposed to achieve the stated objectives, (4) The presentation of the results is coherent and clear, (5) The discussion and conclusion are based on the results and adequate references are included to support the findings.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Jorge Vergara-Morales

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