Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk driving

Femke Cathelyn; Pieter Van Dessel; Jan De Houwer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275328

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 7, 2021
5 Aug 2022 Decision Letter - Sónia Brito-Costa, Editor PONE-D-21-38711Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk drivingPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Cathelyn, 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. This decision letter replaces the previous decision on this manuscript. Please disregard any attachments to this message. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 19 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, George Vousden Deputy Editor in Chief PLOS ONE On behalf of, Sónia Brito-Costa, Ph.D. 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. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 3. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: "This work is supported by Ghent University [grant number BOF16/MET_V/002; https://www.ugent.be/en/research/funding/bof/methusalem] to JDH and by the Scientific Research Foundation Flanders [grant number FWO19/PDS/041; https://www.fwo.be/] to PVD. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please provide an amended statement that declares all the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. [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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 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: 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: Comments on PONE-D-21-38711 ‘Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk driving’ The topic of research is relevant for practical use in daily work and is an understudied subject. The authors are prominently working on ways to expand the scope and utility of the tool, which will ultimately help in protecting the lives of people. With few clarifications required in methodology, use of tools, and replicability of this study in other contexts, the proposed manuscript can be accepted for publication. Few comments to adjust: Abstract: Always provide Confidence Internal and p-value while reporting OR results. Kindly include them. For study 1: The limitations of not allowing to carry out confirmatory analysis with lower power and smaller sample size than anticipated (during the design) of the study are well explained. Thus, the preliminary concept of validation of predictive capacity of the tool in Dutch-speaking Belgian participants. It is not clear which version of P-DUI-IAT – English or Dutch – was used. The previous study of the same group of researchers (Cathelyn, Van Dessel, & De Houwer, 2021), which was published in the Journal of Safety Research in October 2021, mentions that P-DUI-IAT was a newly developed tool by the researchers themselves. Not many psychometric properties except split-half reliability were presented. No confirmatory factor analysis was done. Similarly, the response rate in the follow-up study was not significant. In any replication studies, the researchers have to adapt from failures and apply concrete procedures to overcome past mistakes. In study 2, the researchers replicated similar procedures of research with the inclusion of Native English-Speaking participants. The face validity, a roundtable with experts, pilot testing, and analysis of descriptive statistics before applying the full-scale study were undermined. In study 2: the researchers changed the inclusion criteria and expanded to the participants from native English-Speaking countries. There is no demographic explanation on how many portions of the respondents were native English speakers and how many were non-native. For me, the main issue of this study's findings is the replicability of the tool in the practical world. The content, face, concurrent, factorial, and external validity are still questionable. The tool still lacks a confirmatory factor analysis (even, exploratory one), and testing of other parameters (Souza, Alexandre, & Guirardello, 2017; Echevarría-Guanilo, Gonçalves, & Romanoski, 2018). It is recommended to incorporate these elements, wherever feasible so that the findings of this study can easily be replicated, and the tool can be used properly. Reference: Cathelyn, F., Van Dessel, P., & De Houwer, J. (2021). Predicting Drunk Driving Using a Variant of the Implicit Association Test. Journal of Safety Research. https://liplab.be/onewebmedia/Cathelyn%20Van%20Dessel%20J%20Safety%20Res%20Drunk%20Driving%20Implicit.pdf Souza, A. C. D., Alexandre, N. M. C., & Guirardello, E. D. B. (2017). Psychometric properties in instruments evaluation of reliability and validity. Epidemiologia e Serviços de Saúde, 26, 649-659. Echevarría-Guanilo, M. E., Gonçalves, N., & Romanoski, P. J. (2018). Psychometric properties of measurement instruments: conceptual bases and evaluation methods-part I. Texto & Contexto-Enfermagem, 28: e20170311 Reviewer #2: I would like to congratulate the authors for the originality of the study. However, I think that it is possible to improve it. I consider that the article is too long and it would be better to restructure it. For example, within the general structure of method, results and conclusions, include what pertains to each study, instead of each one of those sections for each study. It would also be appropriate to include more bibliography related to the main topic (for example, add more citations when referencing citation 22). ****** 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: Yes: Yubaraj Adhikari, PhD Reviewer #2: Yes: Marta Sancho ******** [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.0275328.r001
Revision 1
9 Sep 2022 Author Response We thank the editor for inviting us to respond to the reviewers’ comments and revise the manuscript. We thank the reviewers for their constructive and valuable feedback. In the revised manuscript, we addressed the issues that were raised. Our specific responses to the reviewers’ comments are provided below. Reviewer #1 Comments on PONE-D-21-38711 ‘Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk driving’. The topic of research is relevant for practical use in daily work and is an understudied subject. The authors are prominently working on ways to expand the scope and utility of the tool, which will ultimately help in protecting the lives of people. With few clarifications required in methodology, use of tools, and replicability of this study in other contexts, the proposed manuscript can be accepted for publication. Reviewer 1 Comment #1 Abstract: Always provide Confidence Internal and p-value while reporting OR results. Kindly include them. Authors: We thank the reviewer for drawing our attention to this missing information. In the revised manuscript, we now always include confidence intervals and p-values for the ORs (e.g., Abstract, p.2, lines 35-41): “Results from Study 1 show that the P-DUI-IAT predicts self-rated past drunk driving behavior in driving school students (ORs = 3.11-6.12, ps < .043, 95% CIs = [1.11, 37.69]).” and “Results from Study 2, on the other hand, show strong evidence for the utility of both implicit measures to prospectively predict self-rated drunk driving (ORs = 3.80-5.82, ps < .002, 95% CIs = [1.72, 14.47]).” Reviewer 1 Comment #2 For study 1: The limitations of not allowing to carry out confirmatory analysis with lower power and smaller sample size than anticipated (during the design) of the study are well explained. Thus, the preliminary concept of validation of predictive capacity of the tool in Dutch-speaking Belgian participants. It is not clear which version of P-DUI-IAT – English or Dutch – was used. The previous study of the same group of researchers (Cathelyn, Van Dessel, & De Houwer, 2021), which was published in the Journal of Safety Research in October 2021, mentions that P-DUI-IAT was a newly developed tool by the researchers themselves. Not many psychometric properties except split-half reliability were presented. No confirmatory factor analysis was done. Similarly, the response rate in the follow-up study was not significant. Authors: We thank the reviewer for pointing out this ambiguity about the version of the IAT that we used. In the revised version of our manuscript, we now clearly state that “Five Belgian driving schools invited native Dutch-speaking students who had recently taken the refresher course to participate in Study 1.” (p.8, line 171) and “In Study 2, native English-speaking participants were recruited via Prolific Academic (an online recruitment platform).” (p.9, line 197). In the Materials section of the revised manuscript, we now also clearly state that “For Study 2, we adopted the (English) materials from our previous studies [25]. For Study 1, all materials were translated to Dutch using the back translation method.” (p.11, lines 227-228). We also agree with the reviewer that it is important to examine the psychometric properties of a measure before it can be applied in real-world contexts. Please note, however, that the aim of these studies was not to already deliver a measure that is ready to be used in a real-world context, and that examining all psychometric properties of our measures would go beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, the primary aim of the current studies was to test whether our measures can predict drunk driving (a) in an ecologically valid context and (b) over time. Thus, in the current studies, we examined the criterion/predictive validity (i.e., does our measure predict scores on a criterion measure?) and external/ecological validity (i.e., do our previous findings generalize to real-life situations outside of a research setting?). Also, while we did not examine the construct validity of our measures using a confirmatory (or exploratory) factor analysis, we did examine this type of validity using the known-groups technique. More specifically, by assessing whether our measures can detect differences between drunk driving and non-drunk driving groups (as described in Souza et al., 2017). Thus, we believe that these (and our previous) studies provide initial evidence for the validity of our measures, which is the aim of our studies. Of course, a more distal goal of these studies is to develop a measure that could eventually be applied in real-world contexts (e.g., driving schools) to predict drunk driving, and we agree that further investigation of the psychometric properties of our measures will be necessary before application can be considered viable. Therefore, in the revised version of the manuscript, we now note that “Before these measures can be applied in real-world contexts, their psychometric properties (e.g., test-retest reliability, divergent validity, etc.) should be examined within those specific contexts to ensure that the measures are valid and reliable.” (p.27, lines 603-605). Reviewer 1 Comment #3 In any replication studies, the researchers have to adapt from failures and apply concrete procedures to overcome past mistakes. In study 2, the researchers replicated similar procedures of research with the inclusion of Native English-Speaking participants. The face validity, a roundtable with experts, pilot testing, and analysis of descriptive statistics before applying the full-scale study were undermined. Authors: Please note that (as described in our response to Comment #2 by Reviewer 1) in Study 2, we adopted the original English materials from our previous studies (Cathelyn et al., 2021). For Study 1, however, we did translate the IAT materials to Dutch using the back translation method which might have led to differences in how IAT categories can be interpreted compared to in the original IAT. We agree that this is a limitation of Study 1. In the General Discussion of the revised manuscript, we now acknowledge this limitation: “Translating the materials from English to Dutch might have led to subtle differences in meaning which could have resulted in difference in findings between the study including Dutch-speaking participants and the studies including English-speaking participants. Future studies should take additional precautions before using the materials in different populations, such as conducting an analysis of conceptual equivalence (e.g., by consulting experts) and pilot testing the materials (Echevarría-Guanilo et al., 2018)” (p.26, lines 565-570) Reviewer 1 Comment #4 In study 2: the researchers changed the inclusion criteria and expanded to the participants from native English-Speaking countries. There is no demographic explanation on how many portions of the respondents were native English speakers and how many were non-native. Authors: In Study 2, participants were recruited via Prolific Academic (an online recruitment platform). We used two filters to ensure that participants were native-English speakers (i.e., first language English and UK or USA nationality). This was already reported in the previous version of our manuscript: “Participants who owned a valid driver’s license, drove their car at least once per week, drank more than one unit of alcohol per week, had the UK nationality, and whose first language was English, were invited to participate in the prescreening study.” (p. 9, lines 200-203) Reviewer 1 Comment #5 For me, the main issue of this study's findings is the replicability of the tool in the practical world. The content, face, concurrent, factorial, and external validity are still questionable. The tool still lacks a confirmatory factor analysis (even, exploratory one), and testing of other parameters (Souza, Alexandre, & Guirardello, 2017; Echevarría-Guanilo, Gonçalves, & Romanoski, 2018). It is recommended to incorporate these elements, wherever feasible so that the findings of this study can easily be replicated, and the tool can be used properly. Authors: We agree that our measures are not ready to be applied in real-world contexts, and we explicitly comment on this in the General Discussion of our manuscript, for example: “Of course, the current studies only provide initial evidence for the practical utility of implicit measures and further research on other utility aspects will be necessary before the A- and P-DUI-IAT can be incorporated in real-world settings. Nevertheless, we believe that the findings from the current studies provide a first step towards that direction.” (p.25, lines 551-554). “Finally, while the IATs discriminated between participants who had driven drunk between baseline and follow-up and participants who did not, the classification statistics (as assessed through ROC analyses) were far from perfect. For our IATs to have practical value, these classification statistics should be improved and other classification statistics (e.g., positive predictive value) should be tested. To this end, future studies could tweak different aspects of the IATs (e.g., number of trials, category labels, etc.) and examine whether this improves their classification abilities. Also, before these measures can be applied in real-world contexts, their (other) psychometric properties should be examined within that specific context to ensure that the measures are valid and reliable.” (p.27, lines 597-605) And, as noted in the Conclusions section of our manuscript: “While further applied research is necessary, the current results could provide a first step towards the application of implicit measures in real-world contexts.” (p.28, lines 611-613) Please also see our response to Comment #2 by Reviewer 1. Reviewer #2 I would like to congratulate the authors for the originality of the study. However, I think that it is possible to improve it. Reviewer #2 Comment #1: I consider that the article is too long and it would be better to restructure it. For example, within the general structure of method, results and conclusions, include what pertains to each study, instead of each one of those sections for each study. It would also be appropriate to include more bibliography related to the main topic (for example, add more citations when referencing citation 22). Authors: We thank the reviewer for drawing our attention to this issue. We followed the reviewer’s suggestion to restructure the manuscript such that there is now one Method, Results, and Discussion section for both studies instead of individual subsections for each study. In the revised manuscript, we also discuss in more detail the literature related to the utility of implicit measures (see for example p.3, line 49, and p.4 line 72). Please note that we were not able to add more references regarding the prediction of road safety behavior using implicit measures because this is a relatively new field and we believe that we already discussed all the relevant literature. For example, to the best of our knowledge, only two studies thus far have tested the utility of (more traditional) implicit measures for predicting drunk driving. We also refer to a recent review by Tosi et al. (2021) on implicit and explicit measures in transportation research. Also, please note that citation 22 (now citation 25) refers to our previous study in which we developed an implicit measure of beliefs for predicting drunk driving. This was the first study to develop this type of measure for these purposes. The aim of the current studies was to build on this previous study and further validate the P-DUI-IAT as a tool for predicting drunk driving. References Cathelyn, F., Van Dessel, P., & De Houwer, J. (2022). Predicting drunk driving using a variant of the implicit association test. Journal of safety research, 81, 134-142. Echevarría-Guanilo, M. E., Gonçalves, N., & Romanoski, P. J. (2018). Psychometric properties of measurement instruments: conceptual bases and evaluation methods-part I. Texto & Contexto-Enfermagem, 26. Souza, A. C. D., Alexandre, N. M. C., & Guirardello, E. D. B. (2017). Psychometric properties in instruments evaluation of reliability and validity. Epidemiologia e servicos de saude, 26, 649-659. Tosi, J.D., Haworth, N., Díaz-Lázaro, C.M., Poó, F.M., Ledesma, R.D. (2021). Implicit and explicit attitudes in transportation research: A literature review. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 77. 87–101. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275328.r002
14 Sep 2022 Decision Letter - Sónia Brito-Costa, Editor Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk driving PONE-D-21-38711R1 Dear Dr. Cathelyn, 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, Sónia Brito-Costa, Ph.D. 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: I Don't Know ****** 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: The authors have adequately addressed all concerns and comments raised by the reviewer. The reviewer believes that the quality of the paper is improved after addressing the concerns. The reviewer recommends to accept this paper and publish accordingly. ****** 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: Yes: Yubaraj Adhikari, PhD ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275328.r003
Formally Accepted
20 Sep 2022 Acceptance Letter - Sónia Brito-Costa, Editor PONE-D-21-38711R1 Testing the practical utility of implicit measures of beliefs for predicting drunk driving Dear Dr. Cathelyn: 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. Sónia Brito-Costa Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275328.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 .