PONE-D-20-37037The “Negative Tetrad” in sports: A predictive study on competition sailors using Bayesian NetworksPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Trigueros,

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The reviewers’ comments raise some overlapping concerns regarding the framing, methodology, and depth of discussion. Specifically, they note that further integration and connection to prior literature is needed to justify the methodology and tasks described, in addition greater clarification and justification for the variables described.

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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: No

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 current manuscript reports a Bayesian approach to examine the empirical network across several so-called ‘negative’ constructs within sport. I am excited to see the application of novel methodological approaches applied to sport and exercise psychology. My review is nevertheless relatively brief because I struggled to understand the goals of this research, its conceptual foundation, and ultimately the steps taken when conducting the analysis. In part this was through limitations in the written qualities of this manuscript in English, but in part this also relates to how more work is required to clearly justify and explain this work relative to the field of sport psychology. This means that I focused my review on several specific notes for the authors to consider when resubmitting their work to this journal or another in the future. I hope that this feedback is helpful as the authors proceed with the examination of Bayesian networks into the future.

General comments.

INTRODUCTION PREPARATION. The introduction touches on a wide spectrum of topics – personality, the dark triad, self-determination theory, fear of failure, anxiety, burnout. Each of these concepts is introduced in 1-2 paragraphs and then there is a brief statement before leading into the methods. Whereas some of these concepts are indeed needed to introduce their goal, the introduction leaves out crucial assumptions the authors make when conducting this study (e.g., when claiming that a ‘negative tetrad’ exists, there are several crucial assumptions being made).

One way to clarify my concern is that the approach to develop the dark triad was relatively different from that seen in the current study. That construct was initially uncovered through arguments that the concepts (while conceptually distinct) nevertheless are each personality traits that share a large degree of variability and appear together with regularity. Furthermore, the status of the dark triad has been defended through tests of whether other potential constructs (e.g., sadism) may also fit. What types of similar assumptions shaped the design of the current study?

In contrast to something like the dark triad, the current authors also selected constructs that seemed ‘negative’ but that come from different domains (e.g., motivation, emotion, personality, biopsychosocial states). There is no clear theoretical foundation for integrating these concepts. Although analyses ultimately included 18 constructs, how did the authors select these 18 subscales from amidst other ‘negative’ construct that could just as easily have been included within the current study (e.g., perfectionism; narcissism; etc.).

Summing up these points, the introduction is difficult to understand and mainly introduces a list of concepts that seem to be connected because we see some of them as ‘negative’. The introduction provides not insights into the value of conducting the current analyses (for theory or for practical benefit) nor does it give any sense for how the selected constructs relate to one another or are unique from the other ‘negative’ constructs that could have been selected.

COULD ‘NEGATIVE’ PHRASING BE THE MAIN THING UNITING THESE CONCEPTS? I am curious e authors didn’t reveal ‘positive’ constructs as being involved in the network via negative associations.

METHODS DESCRIPTION. Several areas within the methods section were challenging to fully understand. For instance, it was not particularly clear how given measures relate back to past-validated tools or to theory. Notably, the authors note one psychological needs tool that included a subscale termed ‘relationship with others’, which seems to relate to relatedness from basic needs theory? Furthermore, although I agree that need frustration is indeed a key way to examine the basic needs separate from need satisfaction, it is unclear what it means that there was a higher-order frustration factor?

LOW INCIDENCE OF MEASURED CONSTRUCTS. It would be valuable to see further efforts to introduce the descriptives for key constructs as preliminary analyses. This is especially because many of the ‘negative’ constructs were reported at such a low level, it would be useful to see these responding patterns in ways other than those captured in the Bayesion network (described only as whether they were classified as ‘low’ or ‘high’).

DATA AVAILABILITY. In the submission, the authors noted that all data were available in the document or related files. PLOS requires that 'original' data be made available (e.g., raw data) - which authors often do through links to online data repositories. It does not seem like this submission, then, has made data available.

Specific comments.

- Certain words are capitalized when it is not clear why they are treated in such a way (e.g., L50-L58, words like sport and positive psychology are capitalized)

- L50-L58 – The paragraph detracts from the goal of this paper. First, some of the wording and language used is not correct (e.g., I think when saying ‘black spots’ that the authors mean ‘blank spots’ or ‘blind spots). Second, I do not believe there is evidence that sport research is undergoing any particular shift toward prevention compared to before, and that the health psychology model is applied (whatever a health psychology model refers to).

- L67-L73 – When describing the foundation of personality research in sport I recommend that the authors consider sources like “Allen, M. S., Greenlees, I., & Jones, M. (2013). Personality in sport: A comprehensive review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6(1), 184-208.”

- L91 – self-determination theory should be introduced in full here. Furthermore, the authors here are mainly focused on basic needs theory as opposed to the broader self-determination theory.

- L115 – I don’t know if this description of how fear of failure comes from a lack of control is entirely accurate – and I also am not certain that all athletes demonstrate fear of failure as claimed by the authors.

- L114-L122 – An extremely long run-on sentence.

- L151 – More demographic or sport background features of the sample would be useful, beyond age and sex.

- L158-L164 – It is challenging to interpret the descriptions for the scales. For instance, the authors stated: “This factor consists of 17 items: autonomy; competence; relationship with others and novelty. In addition, Trigueros et al. (2020) grouped the four factors into one of a higher order, called Frustration. The study subjects were required to respond using a Likert scale ranging from 1 (total disagreement) to 7 (total agreement).” Do the authors mean ‘scale’ instead of ‘factor’? Following ’17 items’ it seems that the authors mean that there were 17 items that were all ultimately classified within three subscales. Furthermore, the authors refer to a frustration factor of ‘higher order’ – and this is unclear.

- L181 – What does ‘de-concentration’ mean?

- L200 – What does the term ‘expert pollster’ relate to?

- L211 – The following is an example of one statement that is difficult to interpret: “information on the probability of occurrence of events (some being psychological) related to performance in sports or, for example, the likelihood of sports injuries.”

- L205 – The approaches used to complete data management (e.g., computing scales, assessing outliers, etc.) as well as any preliminary analyses should be introduced in data analysis.

- L279 – Another example of a statement that is challenging to understand and that seems inaccurate: “the most relevant variable, which has no probabilistic dependence, is not a motivational one but rather the devaluation of playing sports due to a fear of being at fault or failing. This variable has a much more basic sense than those derived from the SDT (although it impacts on the likelihood of frustration in competition, of novelty, and of anxiety due to concern about performance.” It is unclear what terms like ‘a more basic sense’ refer to. Furthermore, fear of failure is certainly a state or trait that can be considered motivational – particularly evident in how its theoretical background is closely tied to achievement goals theory.

- L369 – Be careful about using gendered language when referring to athletes generally (e.g., “success in his career”

Reviewer #2: The authors present an interesting work from the point of view of psychological well-being of high-performance athletes. It is still difficult to find studies that take into account so many variables and can make a prediction, and the authors present well the variables and the predictions found.

However, it is possible that the authors have more information about the sample that they can show in the work, for example, the years of experience of the athletes or specify the level of the competitions (since it says they are "semi-professionals" but they can only compete at the national level or also internationally, and perhaps the fear of error or burnout can be better understood with this information).

It may also be interesting to indicate at what time of the season the data was taken (whether in preseason, during competitions, etc.).

Among the strengths of the study, it should be noted that the variables studied are currently of great interest in the scientific literature lately, and the articles consulted are recent and reliable.

The discussion is interesting and the authors explain these relationships very well. However, in the second paragraph of the discussion, the authors say that these predictions occur even in a sample where they are unlikely to occur, but is that because they are not professionals? Do the characteristics of sailing make it less demanding than other sports or what characteristic are they referring to? (lines 347-351).

Please, also check some quotes where there are small errors such as indicating the author's initial (for example, line 353)

or missing a dot after "et al" (for example, lines 106, 300, 366).

I hope that the authors consider my suggestions and I congratulate them for the work.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Can we speak of a negative psychological tetrad in sports? A probabilistic Bayesian study on competitive sailing.

PONE-D-20-37037R1

Dear Dr. Trigueros,

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.

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Academic Editor

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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 #2: 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

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

Reviewer #2: 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

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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

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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: Thanks for attending all suggestions. I believe that the article meets the publication requirements.

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Reviewer #2: No

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