PONE-D-22-20945Measurement Invariance of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire by Socioeconomic Status and Ethnicity from Ages 3 to 17 years: A Population Cohort StudyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Toseeb,

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.

An expert has reviewed your contribution and found some merits. However, he also pointed out some points that you should pay attention to prepare a revision. In addition to his comments, I have a major concern regarding your analysis in measurement invariance. Specifically, you have a longitudinal data but you did not test longitudinal invariance. I cannot understand this. If you used independent model to test the measurement invariance for the longitudinal dataset, your analysis did not consider the correlations nested in persons. Therefore, your invariance findings are biased. Please consider using dependent model to test for the longitudinal invariance. Also, this means that you have to consider the issue of missing values. 

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Thank you very much for giving me the chance to review this manuscript.

I have a minor comment on the authors work before the manuscript got publishing as follows;

- Your study is focused on the invariance of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire by Socioeconomic Status and Ethnicity for Mental Health Difficulties, which is unclear in the title. Therefore, could you modify your study title accordingly to your study objectives, the primary outcome, the study target population, and the study design?

- In the Abstract, please clearly highlight your main study objective.

-In the background of your study, could you highlight and discuss what has been done in the previous studies in terms of the factor structure and construct invariance of different SDQs across socioeconomic and ethnic categories and other factors investigated by these studies, including the results and the limitations in the methods you have mentioned.

- Under the methods section, please add a subsection for study design.

- Under the statistical analysis in the method, you mention that to address the research question, you performed confirmatory factor analysis models and measurement invariance; please clearly explain the steps of performing these analyses. Furthermore, in this section, you can refer to the indicators references with the references not to the results of your study regarding these indicators.

- The discussion is concise compared to your study results; in addition to discussing your study results, methods with previous studies are either inconsistent or similar; please highlight the theoretical and practical implications of your study findings.

- Moreover, at the end of the discussion, you have highlighted your study strengths and limitations, could you include the recommendations for future studies in line with the same points.

- In the conclusions, the most needing is a reflection of the results and the theoretical and practical implications.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Musheer A. Aljaberi

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Measurement Invariance of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Across Socioeconomic Status and Ethnicity from Ages 3 to 17 years: A Population Cohort Study

PONE-D-22-20945R1

Dear Dr. Toseeb,

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.

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Kind regards,

Chung-Ying Lin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have satisfactorily addressed the reviewer's comments and my concerns. Thank you for disclosing the information regarding the prior study on longitudinal invariance. For the revision, I only have one minor comment but I think it can be addressed during the proofread. That is, the sentence "Along with recent research demonstrating longitudinal invariance using the present (MCS), ...." does not need to have the parentheses for MCS. 

Reviewers' comments: