PONE-D-22-21321How families coped with the COVID-19 school closures in England: a qualitative study about parents’ battles with home-schooling and the factors that impacted children’s education, physical activity, and well-beingPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Woodland,

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Additional Editor Comments:

Please address the reviewers comments to improve the suitability of your manuscript. Importantly, place emphasis on the introduction so that it is more consist with the aims and rationale for the study. 

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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

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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: Yes

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 title should be revisited. It is long-winded and not focused.

The background section in the abstract says that “there is limited understanding about the impacts of this (school closure in England) on children’s mental and physical health and their education.” But then the next sentence goes on to say that you therefore decided (logical to assume based on the preceding statement) to explore "how families coped during the school closure". One expects that the study should have explored the issues such as children's mental, physical health and education, as it seems to be the gap identified.

Further, while the background suggests that the study wanted to establish "how" families coped, in the results, the it says the “themes that impacted a family’s ability to cope during the lock-down. Based on the background, one expects to read on “HOW families coped”. However, the results suggest that attention is on “Factors that impacted a family’s ability to cope”. Furthermore, the conclusion also talks about the “factors that impeded families to cope with lock-down”.

It is highly recommended that you should decide on a particular issue, be it "how families cope", family's ability to cope" or "factors that impeded family's to cope". Another way, would be to revisit the main objective and therefore, the title of the study and have the three as MAIN themes.

Just to make the point clearer, also, the title suggests the study was about the “factors that impacted children’s education, physical activity and well-being”.

It is important that the paper should focus on a particular issue and ensure a “golden thread”. The current version seems to wonder from one issue to another. It also makes conclusions not based on the results presented.

Reviewer #2: Manuscript Review for PLOS ONE (Manuscript ID: PONE-D-22-21321)

The overall aim of the manuscript entitled “How families coped with the COVID-19 school closures in England: a qualitative study about parents’ battles with home-schooling and the factors that impacted children’s education, physical activity, and well-being” was to examine factors that impacted i) a family's well-being, ii) children’s education, and iii) physical activity during the school closures in England, and how these factors affected the ability of families to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the manuscript has notable strengths, however, there are several concerns that limit the enthusiasm about the current manuscript and should be addressed.

Overall:

1. Please review the manuscript to ensure it follows APA formatting.

2. The manuscript uses the terms “parent” and “caregivers.” This reviewer would encourage the authors to use the more inclusive term (caregivers) throughout.

3. Generally, the manuscript could also benefit from stronger topic sentences and transitions throughout that better reflect the information covered within the paragraph and enhance the fluidity of the manuscript and clearly illustrate the information for the readers as they are going through the manuscript. For example, the second paragraph in the introduction discusses home-schooling and how families adapted. However, the third paragraph discusses the benefits of schooling, such as “provid[ing] children with access to health services…” A stronger transition between the two paragraphs is recommend.

Introduction:

4. Overall, the introduction would benefit from being expanded and edited to better set the stage for the current study. For example, the manuscript would benefit from a brief review of the potential long-term mental health implications for children and families. Further, the impact of other familial and environmental factors (e.g., SES, race/ethnicity, language, education level, preexisting emotional and behavioral problems and/or caregivers with preexisting psychological concerns, etc.) is not discussed in the introduction. This is especially important given that minoritized and under resourced communities have been shown to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This is alluded to on page 5, where the manuscript states: “children in low-income households can access free school meals,” but should be discussed in more detail as it is an important factor in understanding how families coped with the COVID-19 school closures. It would be helpful to expand the introduction to include a full review of the literature.

5. Additionally, it would be helpful to elaborate on the paragraph on page 5, “The impacts of the lockdown measures, on the family system, physical and mental health, and education, are not yet fully understood.” Specifically, there is literature indicating that children exposed to traumatic and/or stressful events, such as COVID-19, are at greater risk for experiencing emotional and behavioral problems (this is briefly mentioned in the discussion). Similarly, COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the level of stress and mental health of caregivers. In its current form, the manuscript does not outline a clear study scope or provide a rationale for why the study is needed and how it contributes and/or extends the current literature.  

6. The introduction would benefit from editing the current study section (page 5) to include a clear rationale for the current study along with outlined hypotheses.

7. The manuscript would benefit from defining on the following terms such as: “health care plan,” “Furlough,”” family's well-being,”” children’s education,” and “physical activity.”

Materials and Methods:

8. Additional information is needed regarding how “one-to-one qualitative interviews” were described to participants.

9. Eligibility criteria was described as “Participants were over 18 years of age, lived in England, and were the primary caregiver to at least one child (18 years and under) who was not attending childcare, pre-school, or school due to COVID-19.” Could they have other children attending school and if so, when responding to questions were they asked to consider the child who does not attend school? Also, were participants were receiving other services? These would be important to know to put the current paper in context, as some of these services may inherently impact study outcome variables. 

10. A weakness of the manuscript is the limited description of the recruitment (e.g., consent process, context, how the study was described to potential participants) and assessment process. This section would benefit from including a timeline of assessments relative to the consent process and study’s duration. Additional information when (relative to study timeline) did participants dropout  should be noted.

11. On page 6 the manuscript states, “Five hundred and thirty-nine potential participants applied to participate in the study and were screened for eligibility, and 47 were selected for follow-up screening via telephone.” Detailed information was not provided regarding participants that did not meet eligibility, agree to participate, or were excluded from the study. Were these participants different from those that continued their participation based on demographic information? It would also be helpful to know whether participants (if any) provided any reasons for not participating in the study. 

12. Similarly, on page 6 the manuscript states: “Eligible participants were selected for interview according to gender, ethnicity, marital status, employment status, income, level of education, living region, keyworker status, the number of children in the household, and children’s age to ensure a diverse sample." Additional information is needed to understand this additional screening process. It seems like 47 were selected for follow-up screening via telephone and only 30 were interviewed. It is not clear what screen criteria were for the different screening phases.

13. A rationale should be included for selection of the study age range given potential age-related differences in outcomes.

14. On page 6 the manuscript states, “We used a semi-structured interview guide to explore how families coped with the school closures.” It would be helpful to provide additional information about this approach- was the interview developed? If so, by who? Was it based on an existing measure? How were questions created?

15. Similarly, the manuscript states “Four parents who had children in school or childcare before the school closures reviewed our initial interview guide. We amended questions, clarifying those that appeared challenging to answer based on their feedback.” The manuscript would benefit from providing information related to how those four families were selected. What were the ages of their children? This is important given potential age-related differences in how families experienced and coped with the COVID-19 school closures. This should also be noted as a limitation.

16. The manuscript states, “All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.” It is important to describe how this process was explained to participants to ensure participants felts comfortable disclosing more detailed and in-depth information. Also, who transcribed the interviews?

17. It is unclear whether all authors were involved in creating the initial topic groups? Were any other study team members involved in this process?

Results:

18. On page 8 the manuscript states, “Further demographic information is presented in Table 3. All participants had at least one child who was not attending school or childcare because of the pandemic, although six were not in childcare or school before the closures.” It would be helpful to include this point in the limitations section given that families of children who were not in childcare or school before the closures may differ in terms of existing resources and potentially experiences and coping strategies.

19. It would be helpful to add the percentages to the demographic table on page 8.

Discussion:

20. The authors should consider revising this section for improved clarity overall. It reads in some areas like an Introduction section. It would be helpful for the discussion to include a more in-depth discussion about the generalizability of these findings and interpretation of the findings that includes possible explanations and implications, as well as how the current study extends the work has been done by clearly outlining clinical and research implications of these findings. Lastly, how hypotheses were consistent/inconsistent with findings.

21. Limitations and future directions were brief. Consider expanding upon the limitations (e.g., majority of children were under the age of 12, lack of other caregiver involvement or report, limited generalizability) and future directions.

22. The manuscript notes, “Our findings highlight that some families had increased challenges due to pre-existing social and economic inequalities and factors outside of their control.” Discussion around pre-existing social and economic inequalities should be added in the introduction section.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Eric Umar

Reviewer #2: No

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A qualitative study about how families coped with managing their well-being, children’s physical activity and education during the COVID-19 school closures in England

PONE-D-22-21321R1

Dear Dr. Woodland,

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,

Prabhat Mittal, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have been adequately addressed 

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

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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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

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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

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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: There is need to clean in text referencing. There are many instances where the reference has been put in a wrong place.

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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.

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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: Eric Umar

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