PONE-D-22-10116Development and validation of a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The objective of this study was to demonstrate the internal consistency and construct validity of Japanese translation of the K-SF-42 (J-K-SF-42).

This study has been well conducted. I only have a few comments and suggestions, especially with a view to clearer reporting.

1. There are several general classes of reliability estimates. In this study, the authors determined the internal consistency of the J-K-SF-42. I suggest to mention always ‘internal consistency’ instead of ‘reliability’ (see for example lines 20, 449, 495).

2. Construct validity should be assessed by testing predefined hypotheses. The authors of this paper did this thoroughly. Notwithstanding this, I challenge them to think about how they can display the confirmation of these hypotheses in a more comprehensive way, for example using a table.

3. Furthermore, I think it would be useful, when evaluating these hypotheses, not only to look at whether there is a correlation between the subscale in question and a particular scale, but also whether this correlation is stronger than the correlation of the other subscales with that scale.

4. Line 237: the participants received a reward for participation. Is it possible to give some more information on this?

5. Table 1: Since a table must be readable independently, is it possible to list all abbreviations at the bottom of the table? For example K-SF-42-J and Mini-K-J are missing.

6. Lines 267-268: is the K-SF-42-J a six- or seven-point Likert scale?

7. Lines 444-448: maybe some guidelines can be given about how the fit-indices should be interpreted?

8. Lines 465-469: Why is the AIC and BIC not used to compare the one-factor model with the seven-factor model?

9. Lines 483-487: “According to Chen, … is recommended for SRMR”: this could be moved to the method section.

10. Title table 7 and table 8: it must be possible to read the table without reading the text. For example, I suggest to change the title of table 7 into: “Correlation coefficients of the K-SF-42-J with the Mini-K-J, trait emotional intelligence, well-being, and cultural and social resources in childhood”

11.Lines 560-562: “In addition, multi-group CFA demonstrated scalar/strong measurement invariance of the K-SF-42-J over the participants’ sexes and age groups.” Explain the implications of this result.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript describes a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42, a short form of the Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB). Analyses of data from 1440 Japanese online respondents established the instrument's scale reliability and convergent validity.

As a purely methodological project, submitted to an online journal, this work should be published with minor revisions, including improving its English, something that I'm sure one of the native-English-speaking co-authors could do. (For example, there are quite a few missing grammatical articles).

There've been serious substantive challenges in the recent literature to the ALHB and its offshoots, which I'm sure the authors are aware of, but the review process for this paper isn't the place to do battle over them.

Comments and suggestions:

A seven-factor structure was a better fit to the data than a one-factor structure. What does this result say about the value of the concept of a single, unidimensional K-factor, claimed to represent human psychometric life history strategy?

Some of the instruments chosen to demonstrate convergent validity with K-SF-42-J scales seem to be *too* convergent, so to speak -- so similar to their matched K-SF-42-J scales in item content that high correlations are inevitable. This concern applies to the "Parental Styles of Caregivers," "Social Support," "Altruistic Behavior," and especially the "Adult Attachment" instruments. In view of this, some of the bold-faced correlations in Table 8, although significant, are surprisingly low.

Japan has an extraordinarily high frequency of single young adults, many of whom claim to be uninterested in intimate relationships. See for example, https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00142.html. This raises the problem of interpreting participants' answers to questions about adult attachment, SOI, and LTMO. What does it mean to describe your romantic attachment style if you've never had a romantic relationship, and don't want one?

There's apparently a copy-and-paste error on page 16, as the item "Seeing other people exercise motivates me to be more active" appears as an example of both the "Effortful Control" scale and the "Habitual Exercise" scale (where it presumably belongs).

The authors note that additional work should be done to validate this instrument. I would suggest creating Japanese translations of other psychometric LH instruments, such as Dunkel's Life History Rating Form, and checking whether the correlations between these instruments in Japanese is similar to their correlations in English.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Wim Peersman

Reviewer #2: No

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Development and validation of a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42

PONE-D-22-10116R1

Dear Dr. Kawamoto,

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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Kind regards,

Sónia Brito-Costa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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