PONE-D-23-06961The Impact of Chinese Adolescents Visual Art Participation on Self-Efficacy: A Serial Mediating Role of Cognition and EmotionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tadesse,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yuh-Yuh Li, Ph.D.

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

Reviewer #4: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: 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: The Research technically sound, & the data support the conclusions

The Statistical analysis performed appropriately and rigorously

The Authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available

The Manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English, The way of writing very clear, correct, & unambiguous

Reviewer #2: Abstract

The abstract reads well and captures the essence of the study.

Introduction:

This section reads more like a review of literature than an introduction. There were far too many references to existing literature, indicating that this study was based on a thorough review of related literature. It is expected that the authors had a reason for conducting a literature review in the first place. That is what we are expecting to see in the introduction. That will be the impetus for the study. This could be conceptualised better without relying on too many references to related literature.

It is worth noting that, contrary to the authors' assertion, some extracurricular activities can be relatively inexpensive. That could be why children from low-income families excel in professional football, a sport that is considered extracurricular at the primary school level.

It might be useful to mention the range of skills that a child is likely to acquire at primary/secondary school age, as well as how art can stimulate those skills.

I noticed multiple sources (citations) for each claim, indicating thorough research. However, you might want to limit it to three or four references. In-text citations abound on the first few pages.

Literature Review:

The array of references from related literature demonstrates the breadth of the research here. However, the literature review should be more critical. It is dense with references to other people's work, with little input from the authors on whether they agree or disagree with the positions in the existing literature. The references (works cited) must be contextualised within the Chinese environment - why do the authors agree with those positions? And why don't they agree based on local observation? Again, a portion of the literature review should have been included in the introduction section, and similar arguments were presented in both the introduction and the literature review section.

Secondly, the literature review section should be organised in the same order that the concepts were introduced: art participation, cognition, emotion, and self-efficacy. As a result, I would have expected a conceptual approach in the section on literature review.

There were a few spelling mistakes, sentence construction issues, and grammatical errors in this and the other sections. On the fourth page of the literature review section, there were a couple of incomplete sentences, such as "Likewise, given that primarily girls participate in extracurricular activities such as painting, drawing, sculpturing, crafting, and designing that require extensive creativity."

Hypotheses:

This is concise and clear. The structure of the literature review, on the other hand, should have followed the same order as the hypothesis presented. This will facilitate reading and improve comprehension.

Materials and Methods:

This section is well-written and lends credibility to the researchers' expertise. But what about the research design? And why do you call this research "cross-sectional"?

Findings:

A logical approach to presenting the findings in such a way that they align with the hypothesis would have facilitated reading and comprehension. To address this, I propose that the findings be restructured.

Discussion

I noticed that the six hypotheses were divided into two broad categories in the discussion section. While this is good, it may also be beneficial to inform the readers of the reasoning behind this decision.

Concerning the statement, "Ultimately, this paper discovers that, in addition to academic benefits, art education promotes nonacademic skills, which are the primary agents for academic performance," I find it difficult to associate nonacademic skills as an agent of academic performance. This statement should be clarified in the final paragraph of the discussion section.

Conclusion:

While the conclusion discusses the relationship between art cognition and emotion, it is silent on the relationship between participants' socioeconomic status and art participation. The conclusion should address the two broad areas of focus of this study in order to be complete.

On the last page of your ethical statement, double-check the spelling. The ethical statement, not the ethnic statement, should be used.

Reviewer #3: 1) This paper examines “the potential impact of visual art on adolescents’ emotional, cognition and self-efficacy development” and “the association between parental SES and children’s likelihood to participate in art education and its impact on children’s psychological well-being Emotion, Cognition, and Self-efficacy)

2) SES was measured by each mother’s and father’s educational level and parent’s monthly income. The authors report internal consistency reliability coefficients for these measures but do not indicate why these are needed or their usefulness.

3)Then, the authors define three constructs: art cognition, art emotion, and art participation. For each construct, a 5-item questionnaire measured on a 4-point Likert scale was designed.

Lastly, the authors measured Self-efficacy by adopting “the most classic and reliable instrument developed in Germany for almost three decades (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995).” Unfortunately, the authors do not indicate the name of this test, nor do they present the psychometric properties of it. Obviously, this self-efficacy test was translated to the dialect of the region where the data were collected, but the authors did not provide any information about this process or present any validation data to show the validity of the translated test.

4) The authors did not provide sufficient psychometric data and analysis to show the extent to which these four constructs (art cognition, art emotion, art participation, and self-efficacy) are independent of one another. There is no data to support the reliability and validity of these measures. The dataset is sufficiently large to conduct factor analysis to check the independence and utility of these constructs and provide some psychometric properties and statistical validation.

5) I shall refrain from reviewing the MANOVA results until I know more about the abovementioned four constructs.

6) The authors seem to argue that art cognition, art emotion, and art participation are related to cognitive and emotional development and, ultimately, self-efficacy. However, these connections are not clearly made and focused upon in the introduction or the discussion. The test jumps between ideas without a clear focus.

7) The In-text citation is inconsistent APA (alphabetical order of references and the use et al with more than three authors)

8) This paper reads more like a mini-thesis, not an article intended for publication in a journal.

9) The literature review is long and unnecessary.

10) The ideas presented in the introduction are repeated in the literature review. The introduction and the literature review should be combined into one section, “Introduction,” which should end with the rationale and justification for the study. The current introduction and literature review should be summarized into four to five pages at most.

11) The authors often use the phrase “shred of studies” to refer to few or scattered studies. Perhaps, using a more commonly used phraseology is encouraged.

12) The Participants section includes the following statement: “… 2139 students (NFemale = 1182) in grades 9 (MeanAge = 14.32, range = 13-17, SD = 0.561) participating…” Why report the female but not the male participants?

13) Why is it “exciting” that mother’s educational level cannot predict art participation?

14) This study has more limitations than restricting the data collection to one province and one survey. The limitation

Many grammatical errors

15) In summary, this manuscript needs to be rewritten as a journal article with a clear and precise focus on the objectives of the research, the relationship between the objectives and previous research findings, the psychometric properties of the four constructs, and the relationship between the findings of this study and previous research.

Reviewer #4: Please find below my observations and recommendations.

1. Refer to the PLOS One journal submission guidelines for referencing and other journal reporting formats.

2. It appears the introduction and literature review are not in order. Some ideas are repeated several times in different paragraphs. e.g., art education's influence on academic and psychological development It could be refined and presented in a concise and orderly manner (besides, this is not a systematic review). Again, most discussions are unilateral, ignoring other insights that would properly inform readers; e.g., even though art education or activities improve academics, there are several areas of academics where there are no reliable causal links, and the same is true for other literature discussed. I recommend that conciseness and coherency be prioritised, and I also recommend taking away old studies (citations) where there is much current literature to support a claim.

3. Additional professional editing is needed to improve the manuscript.

4. A reliability test alone is not enough to fully validate a new instrument (or a construct). Other necessary validation analyses, such as EFA and CFA, may be needed to address the various aspects of validity.

5. The language medium of the instruments is unknown, as is the duration of the data collection. It would be more appreciated if each section in the methodology addressed specific issue(s). For example, issues regarding ethical consideration are scattered. Ethical procedures should also be named appropriately.

6. Your strict inference that Chinese parents are definitely responsible for what is observed should be considered (under implications, second line). It could be due to several factors.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr.Ali Hamood Twaij

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Dr. Ali M. AL-Asadi

Reviewer #4: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLOS ONE Manuscript Review-Chinese Adolescents Visual Arts.docx

PONE-D-23-06961R1The Impact of Chinese Adolescents Visual Art Participation on Self-Efficacy: A Serial Mediating Role of Cognition and EmotionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gao,

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 30 Sep. 2023. 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,

Yuh-Yuh Li, Ph.D.

Academic 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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

Reviewer #4: (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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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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 #2: The Authors have made efforts in addressing all the concerns raised during the first round of review.

Reviewer #3: 1) It is understood and expected that a literature review is part of the introduction. The heading “Literature review” should be removed, and a proper transition that leads to the heading “Art participation…” should be inserted.

2) Again, stating the number of males and females in the sample is customary and appropriate. Stating one but not the other expects the reader to figure it out! Please state the number of both sexes.

3) When data analysis leads to “exciting” results, the reasons for such excitement should be explicitly stated. The authors highlighted the following sentences to explain why the results are exciting: “which partially negates the second hypothesis,” which supports the third hypothesis,” and “which validate their (it should be the) fourth hypothesis of this study.” I do not believe this is informative, and again, it burdens the reader to figure out why the authors think these results are wonderful. We should always keep the readers in mind and write for them.

4) While Table 2 provides the confirmatory factor analysis results, the very few words at the end of the Data analysis procedures are hardly sufficient to address the validity of these scales. Moreover, only the fact that confirmatory factor analysis is performed to validate the hypothesized scales should be stated under the data analysis procedure. The factor analysis results should be part of the results section under its own subheading after descriptive statistics. This part should be thoroughly presented in relation to the validation of the scales. That is, explain the results found in Table 2 and reference them to Table 2.

5) I do not believe stating chi-squared to have a highly significant value without properly stating the parameter’s value is consistent with PLOS style.

Reviewer #4: 1.“Hence, discussing out-of-school extracurricular activities' influence on children's cognitive and non-cognitive development took the attention of scholars the present study sought to investigate.” Please consider this sentence. It seems not to be clear. Consider ensuring the free flow of understanding in that paragraph.

1b, "Furthermore, it must be stressed that besides the cognitive development of children through art education, also it strengthens the non-cognitive abilities (self-esteem, self-concept, self-efficacy,

peer-relationship, emotions)," (Please replace "also it" with "art education also". Readers are not familiar with the work like you. Please assist them to easily understand your perspective throughout the paper.

2.The use of conjunctive adverbs such as "thus", "in the light of," etc. should be used appropriately (its usage in many places were inappropriate). Example its usage in "Thus, the current study sought to shed light on........ following the sentence "Although children’s art participation is significantly dependent....."

Social class implies social groups, ranks, or levels, and so I doubt if "social class level" is appropriate.

1c. It appears you are relying solely on AI to deal with syntax and other grammatical issues raised in the previous review. The paper is still not devoid of syntax and other grammatical issues; please seek professional assistance to improve the manuscript or more work need to be done.

3.The research was conducted in 2022. Data collection spans what period?

4.Why is it hard to have a specific section in the methodology that addresses how ethical procedures were properly taken and adhered to in a study involving children? PlosOne requires detailed information on it.

5.With regard to establishing various aspects of validity,

Cite to support your values. For instance, GFI values greater than 0.95 are generally recommended. In your case, we have 0.916, 0.938, 0.942, and 0.885. (It appears something is wrong somewhere.)

Hu and Bentler, and others recommend SRMR values be between 0 to 0.08. Three of your figures were 0.113, 0.257, and 0.190. There appears to be a problem with this fit index too. (Perhaps, you can find literature to support this figures.)

You did not also establish discriminant validity or show us the loading for each item. Until these fundamental issues are resolved, it is hard to comment on the rigorousness of the analysis of a study using latent variables. You can see a statistician for support.

General Comment:

More needs to be done to improve the paper including the abstract.

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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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Ali M. AL-Asadi

Reviewer #4: 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.

The Impact of Chinese Adolescents Visual Art Participation on Self-Efficacy: A Serial Mediating Role of Cognition and Emotion

PONE-D-23-06961R2

Dear Dr. Gao,

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,

Yuh-Yuh Li, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: