PONE-D-21-25538In the quest for effective factors of relationship quality: Insights from intra-couple interaction and financial management variablesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baryła-Matejczuk,

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.

The expert reviewer raises a number of concerns regarding the methodological reporting of the manuscript. In particular, they request further clarification and justification for the procedures and analyses reported.

Can you please address these concerns in your revision?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 12 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Avanti Dey, PhD

Staff 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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

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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

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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

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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: This paper describes a study investigating the associations among financial management behaviors and relationship quality in heterosexual couples in Poland. The introduction needs to be "smoothed" out with less repetition. I suggest beginning with the theory, then provide a literature that does or does not report the theory and then what this study will show about the theory.

My major concerns are with the analyses:

1) A smaller concern is that I could not figure out what the instrument was for relationship quality, that needs to be made clearer, what were the items?

2) Although it was appropriate to separate the males and females given the nonindependence of the data and adding the other partner's satisfaction was important, I think a dyadic data analysis process would have been more appropriate. I was also missing a correlation table showing the correlations of the variables both within and between partners. I worry that the "flip" in the direction of the relationships is more about multicolinearity than reality. Cook and Kenny have shown these "flips" when including multiple family members' data in the same regression equation.

3) I don't understand why an Actor Partner Interdependence model was not used. In the APIM both partner's data and both partner's outcomes are included in the model and actor and partner paths can be tested for equivalence. Using step wise methods are problematic for testing theory, and I don't think it is appropriate to discuss gender differences without also testing the estimates for equivalence. I think the APIM is a much more appropriate model to test and would provide a better test of the theory, than what was presented here.

4) Given the fact that we don't know if the differences between the equation for males and equation for females were statistically significant, and issues with multicollinearity, I don't know that I would trust the discussion section. I would rather see an APIM model with the actor and partner effects tested for equivalence between the partners, before I would be able to trust that the gender differences shown were actual differences and not artifacts of the analyses.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Suzanne Bartle-Haring

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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.

PONE-D-21-25538R1In the quest for effective factors of relationship quality: Insights from intra-couple interaction and financial management variablesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baryła-Matejczuk,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 03 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,

José Alberto Molina

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: The authors have done a great job responding to the original review. I appreciate their finding an expert in dyadic data analysis and testing for indistinguishability. There are also tests that can be performed on the paths to determine if they are statistically different, but I can let that go in this version.

Reviewer #2: The investigators have built two APIM models as presented by Cook and Kenny with rejection of the hypothesis of actors indistinguishability. Assuming the accuracy of the fit as the investigators note, the results are very brief and descriptive and appear to follow from the modeling.

There are certain limitations to this study which the authors note. Primarily, the sample was not random due to the complex sampling procedure. Thus, the results cannot be projected to the entire population of married and cohabiting couples in Poland but rather indicate possible interesting associations only between cross-sectional variables used in this study

Reviewer #3: Point 1 – Research question and scope

"Do financial management behaviors of one partner have an impact on the perception of relationship quality by the other?" I'm not sure this research question can be answered by the current design since causality cannot be inferred. For example, the current research would yield the same results with reverse causality - if one feels that their spouse perceives their relationship to be low quality (i.e., they might break up), then they might alter their financial management behavior (e.g., because the future is uncertain). Therefore, what would happen to the relationship quality if a partner improved their financial management is unclear. In fact, the authors are aware of that when they describe the "feedback loop" in line 85. However, the lack of causality here also allows for other factors to be at play. For instance, if one spouse feels unwell, that might affect both partners' financial behavior and perception of relationship quality, which would confound the analysis. Thus, the authors address the following question "Do financial management behaviors of one partner correlate with the perception of relationship quality by the other?" One way to achieve causality could be to randomize feedback for financial management – i.e., participants describe their own and partners' financial behavior, then they receive feedback that is either positive or negative (randomly), then they report relationship quality.

Point 2 – Data access

(https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/wbbgngvdvr, the DOI link is broken for me)

Since the study is published in English, I think it will be helpful for other researchers to have the data translated. The polish version should be kept, but variable names and question translations are necessary to understand the data.

Point 3 – Measures of relationship quality

It would be interesting to see measures of relationship quality beyond the perception questionnaire. For example, how do financial management behaviors correlate with the probability of divorce? With the likelihood of having children? Tracing the participants for a follow-up survey could answer these questions and test the correlations over time.

Point 4 – Sample

Five hundred couples answered the survey, but how many were contacted and didn't complete it? Even if it's a representative sample demographically, attrition could create a biased sample, making it useful to report.

Point 5 – Imputation

"The weighted predictive mean matching (midastouch) returned the lowest coefficient of variations." It is not clear to me that imputations should minimize variations. Instead, a good way to test the performance of the imputation models is to use some of the non-missing data as a test group. That is, say there are 100 complete observations (I didn't find the number of observations with missing values?), use 80 to train the model to predict each of the missing variables, then see what it predicts for the 20 observations left out. Finally, evaluate the model's accuracy (AUC/ROC for continuous, precision/recall for discrete) by comparing the test prediction with the actual observed values. 

Point 6 – Well-being questionnaire

It's unclear how many questions were there, what they were about and how they were aggregated.

Point 7 – KDM-2 questionnaire

I didn't understand whether and how the validated questionnaire was modified to examine cohabitation relationships and whether the modifications were validated.

Point 8 – Financial management behavior questionnaire

Measuring how significant financial management is in their lives (beyond how they behave) may be beneficial. For example, it could be that some couples care less than others about finances, and for those couples, we would expect a weaker link between financial management and relationship quality.

Also, that questionnaire seems to measure risk aversion and time preference to a large extent (rather than just financial healthiness and desirability), which may strongly confound the analysis.

Point 9 – Analyses explanation

For a non-APIM expert audience, the analysis is tough to follow. I think there should be some explanation (a paragraph?) of the models' math/statistics and intuition. For example, it's unclear why only these five variables were included in the models (especially the interaction between well-being and shared values). What was the test for which you reported the chi-square comparing exactly (the parameters of the two models?)? What are k and the other model parameters you refer to?

Point 10 – Descriptive analysis

It'd be helpful to see summary statistics about each variable used in the model and their intercorrelations. That will allow understanding of collinearities and interpretation of the main results (e.g., is an effect of 1.8 large?).

Point 11 – Main results

Suppose the model's assumptions and parameters are accurate. The results show that both partners report higher relationship quality when women's cash management questionnaire scores increase. When women's insurance and shared goals and values questionnaire scores increase, their male partner weakly reports lower relationship quality. The effect of the other 20 variables was indistinguishable from zero. Also, I didn't understand how the interactional values arguments (lines 339-340) relate to the discussion, nor the size of the effect and its significance reported.

Also, I think Table 2 should include the number of observations.

It is astounding that no matter how the man is reported to behave financially, it has no relationship with the reported quality of his relationship. I think this and other null effects demand an explanation in the discussion.

 

Point 12 – Conclusions

"Our results, seen from this perspective, may suggest that couples in Poland appreciate a division of financial labour." It might be better to ask that directly in the questionnaire because this does not seem to be a plausible interpretation of the positive parameters for the woman's cash management (most other financial parameters were statistically equal to zero).

"… whereby women deal with current financial affairs, while men are authorized to handle strategic ones." what evidence in the data supports that claim? The only related evidence provided is that when women score higher on the cash management questionnaire (for which I didn't see the questions), both partners report higher marriage quality.

*A few typos I found:

Line 27: "… man's cash management predicts changes in her assessment…"

Line 62: "… pursued hereDo…"

Line 67: "Second, we explore this link using dyadic data, which creates an opportunity to compare reports of both partners.. Fourth,"

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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 #1: Yes: Suzanne Bartle-Haring

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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[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.

In the quest for effective factors of satisfaction with life: Insights from intra-couple interaction and financial management variables

PONE-D-21-25538R2

Dear Dr. Baryła-Matejczuk,

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,

José Alberto Molina

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 #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 #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: The authors have done a great job refining their empirical analysis and presenting their data and results. I especially appreciated the conciseness and transparency of the model and discussion. I find the combination of the authors' survey with the APIM model convincing in describing the associations between reported well-being and financial management, which contributes to the literature on the topic. However, as acknowledged by the authors, the evidence does not imply that if one were to change their (or their spouse's) financial management, it would lead to higher reported well-being. Therefore, I think the second part of the title (i.e., starting after the ":") alone describes the manuscript more accurately.

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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 #3: No

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