PONE-D-21-34530Sadness, Hopelessness and Suicide Attempts in Bullying: Data from the 2018 Iowa Youth SurveyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rovers,

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 two reviewers addressed several major concerns about your manuscript. Please revise you manuscript carefully.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 05 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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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kenji Hashimoto, PhD

Academic 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

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: No

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: The study examined the effects of being involved in bullying either as a victim and/or a bully on mental health and suicide ideation by analyzing data from the 2018 Iowa Youth Survey.

The authors claim to have carried out an ecological study (see abstract), but the reasons that led the authors to this option are not clear enough. Analyzing the methodology and the results presented, it seemed to me to be a classic cross-sectional study. I do not observe cluster analysis or any type of aggregate that suggests that we are facing an ecological study.

Another important aspect is the reference (line 171) that 70,451 validated responses were available for analysis. What would be validated responses and what were the criteria for this validation? How many unvalidated responses were there in the dataset? What would the potential exclusion of unvalidated responses represent to the dataset?

Tables 4, 5 and 6 (pages 15-22) need to be better taken care of. Formatting is hampering the reading and interpretation of results, especially as tables take up many pages. It is also necessary to standardize the decimal places of the p-values. I see it as fundamental that the authors present descriptive statistics (n, %) for each variable tested

On the other hand, what stands out most in the manuscript was the strategy for discussing the results. The authors chose to debate subsets of data, segmenting the text and making it difficult to read and understand. This impaired the ability to compare the results with other research, making the interpretation superficial. Again, I emphasize that the study presents important results and a very relevant and urgent object. However, it deserves a thorough review of the text.

Finally, the authors do not make the data available for verification, merely informing that the data is the property of the Iowa Department of Public Health and can be made available upon request. I suggest that the form of data collection used in this manuscript be specifically informed.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. Please find my comments below:

1. Abstract: The authors mentioned that the aim was to "...explore the effects of being involved in bullying...". As this was a cross-sectional study, cause-and-effect cannot be inferred. So I recommend to use words such as "associations" instead of "effects".

2. There is a typo on line 61, Pg 3: Cyberybullying

3. Would the authors consider reporting the values of the ORs and aORs in the abstract? It would provide information on the size of the association.

4. Introduction, Pg 4 Line 76: Please provide the context of Gan et al.'s study, since 55% is a comparatively high prevalence.

5. Information from the World Health Organization may be useful: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/youth-violence

6. Pg 4, ll. 82-83: Please provide the pg number for direct quotations

7. Pg. 5, ll. 105-109: A key reference on bullying and suicide attempt is:

Koyanagi, Ai, et al. "Bullying victimization and suicide attempt among adolescents aged 12–15 years from 48 countries." Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 58.9 (2019): 907-918.

Please consider citing it.

8. Pg. 6, l. 123 I think ADHD should be spelled attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

9. Results: Pg. 30, Figure 1: X and Y axes could be reported in more detail

10. Results: Pg. 13, Table 1. In the table, you reported "In the last 30 days, how many times have you bullied someone else at school?" This is for bully behavior. However, I do not see the information for experiencing bullying. Is this information not available? If available, I think it would be important to report in this table. Also, the information of bully-victims would be important as well.

11. Discussion: I find a large part of the discussion merely reporting the results. A deeper engagement with the results could involve comparisons with other studies, I suggest that the discussion, esp the first 4 paragraphs of the discussion section be revised extensively.

12. I think that referring to the "chicken-and-egg problem" twice in the discussion may not be helpful in putting the study in context. Perhaps citing what other researchers have found, and how they explain the findings using past literature/theory could be more effective in providing context to your findings, i.e., linking the current study results with other extant findings in the US and the world?

13. Again, the discussion in Pg. 34-35 was only a repetition of the results, rather than a meaningful discussion of the findings. A major revamp of the discussion section is required.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-21-34530R1Sadness, Hopelessness and Suicide Attempts in Bullying: Data from the 2018 Iowa Youth SurveyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rovers,

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 two reviewers addressed several minor concerns about your revised manuscript. Please revise your manuscript carefully.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 26 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,

Kenji Hashimoto, PhD

Section Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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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)

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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: Partly

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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

**********

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: I appreciated the way the authors handled my comments and suggestions. Examining the current version of the manuscript, I realize that my recommendations were followed. On the other hand, I suggest that the authors review the limitation section of the study. Note that while the authors accepted the suggestion to revise the study design, the “limitations” section indicates that the study design is ecological. Please to review it.

Reviewer #2: I would like to thank the authors for the revision made, and for extensively addressing the comments, including reanalysis of the data to yield aORs. Please find my comments as follows:

Abstract, Results: "...adjusted ORs (aORs) were generally lower than unadjusted ORs." This statement is too general to be meaningful. I would prefer if the authors state what the changes were, and if any of the predictors had become non-significant in the fully adjusted model.

Abstract, Methods: Is this an ecology study? If not please remove the statement "The study used an Ecological Study method".

Results, Table 3 and 4: Please standardise the reporting of p-values to 3 decimals.

Discussion: The discussion section needs to be revised extensively. A large part of it needs to be moved to the results section. Although the authors have made some effort to discuss the results in light of extant literature, there are some parts of the discussion which are still just repetitions of the results section. Perhaps the authors could read some examples of the discussion section of some high quality journal articles to understand how to synthesize their results and to discuss them meaningfully. Without an extensive revision of the discussion section, I'm afraid the manuscript would be unsuitable for publication.

Formatting: Quotations from a journal article should still include its page numbers. Please provide the page number(s) for the following quotation: "“A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is 83 exposed repeatedly and over time to negative actions on the part of one or more students.” (2)". Reference#2 is a journal article. It should have a page number.

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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

**********

[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.

PONE-D-21-34530R2Sadness, Hopelessness and Suicide Attempts in Bullying: Data from the 2018 Iowa Youth Survey

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rovers,

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 reviewer #2 addressed several minor concerns about your manuscript again. Please revise your manuscript according to comments from the reviewer #2.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 21 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,

Kenji Hashimoto, PhD

Section Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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)

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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: Partly

********** 

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

********** 

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

********** 

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: I appreciate the way the authors treat my suggestions. All the changes requested in the last opinion were fully complied with by the authors. Thus, there are no new suggestions to be made.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript again, which is much improved, and I commend the authors for their effort. This is an important work with very interesting findings to inform policy-making. While there are many merits, I'm afraid, however, that the discussion section is still below the par of a standard discussion for publication in an academic journal. For example, the authors are still reporting the results very extensively in the discussion section, as follows: "Other forms of identity bullying on race or religion also had broadly similar ORs across all categories of mental distress and medication use. (Significant race ORs 1.23-1.34. Religion ORs all non-significant. Significant race aORs 1.44-1.54. Religion aORs all non-significant.) Overall, the results in aORs support those unadjusted ORs in that sexual identity bullying should take the highest priority in developing anti-bullying programs. Those prescribed or taking medication had slightly lower but still significant aORS. Similar to identity bullying, aORs for social bullying were generally a bit lower than ORs. (ORs 1.23 – 2.15. aORs Not significant for name calling, otherwise 1.32-1.14 for sadness only, and 1.41 – 2.05 for suicide attempts)"

This is not followed by a meaningful discussion of the results. Please delete this part of the discussion, along with other extensive reporting of the results in the discussion section. I feel that this kind of reporting violates a very basic notion of separating the results from the discussion section. Repeating the results in the discussion does not make it a meaningful discussion of their findings. An oversimplified way of explaining the difference between the results and discussion section is that the results reports "what" and the discussion discusses "how, why, what is important for the future" etc.

There are also a few phrases/sentences in page 38: "Significant race ORs 1.23-1.34. Religion ORs all non-significant. Significant race aORs 1.44-1.54. Religion aORs all non-significant.)" This standard of writing is not acceptable in an academic journal. These are phrases that are incomplete sentences. I suggest the authors revise their way of writing throughout. Also, please standardise the decimals to 4 or 5 decimals. This is another important part of standard reporting in an academic journal. There are some basic rules, no matter how minor, when writing a manuscript for publication.

There is a very short paragraph, "No aOR for physical bullying had a significant association with impaired mental health for

students prescribed or taking psychotropic medicines". Please combine this paragraph with the next paragraph in which you discussed the implications of the findings. I would recommend that the manuscript be edited by an editor who is familiar with academic writing to improve the way the discussion section is presented. The authors could also read other articles from high impact journals for examples of a well-written discussion section. The authors will notice that they almost never have this kind of extensive reporting of their results in the discussion.

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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: Ricardo de Mattos Russo Rafael

Reviewer #2: 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.

Sadness, Hopelessness and Suicide Attempts in Bullying: Data from the 2018 Iowa Youth Survey

PONE-D-21-34530R3

Dear Dr. Rovers,

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,

Kenji Hashimoto, PhD

Section Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: