PONE-D-22-06849Patient-Centered Communication (PCC) Scale:  Psychometric Analysis and Validation of a Health Survey MeasurePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moser,

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.

Your manuscript has been assessed by two peer-reviewers and their reports are appended below.  The reviewers comment that the manuscript could be strengthened by including a discussion on how the ceiling effect reported in this study compares to the ceiling affects reported in other similar studies. In addition, the reviewers request that more information is provided on ow the CFA fit was evaluated. Could you please carefully revise the manuscript to address all comments raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 29 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,

Maria Elisabeth Johanna Zalm, Ph.D

Editorial Office

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: Yes

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: This is a really nicely done study that is written clearly. I have only a minor comment. As the measure has such a pronounced ceiling effect (33% of respondents having a "perfect" score, I was hoping the authors could comment on how this compares to ceiling effects of other patient-reported measures of provider communication, such as the CAT (Makoul) or the CAHPS communication items (AHRQ). Have the authors considered what cutpoints might be useful (e.g., perfect scores against all else; three tiers perfect, good, inadequate) to deal with these ceiling effects?

Reviewer #2: This high quality manuscript describes the psychometric validation of a 7-item patient-centered communication scale in a large nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. Due to the paucity of well-validated communication scales, this work is a valuable contribution.

No major concerns. This study appropriately evaluated the psychometric properties of the instrument as could be done with the available data.

Minor concerns: Information about how the CFA fit was to be evaluated (“For the CFA, fit was

determined using the following fit indices: Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA,

cut off <.08), Comparative Fit Index (CFI, cut off >.90), Tucker Lewis Index (TLI, cut off >.95),

and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR, cut off <.08). We did not report the chi

square statistic fit as research has found that this test is sensitive to large sample sizes”) should be provided in the Methods section instead of Results. Similarly, in the section on discriminant validity, for the point about not reporting p-values for correlation coefficients.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Patient-Centered Communication (PCC) Scale:  Psychometric Analysis and Validation of a Health Survey Measure

PONE-D-22-06849R1

Dear Dr. Moser,

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,

Nabi Nazari, PhD

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

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

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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 comments have been addressed adequately. My sincere thanks to the authors for their responsiveness.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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