PONE-D-22-33847Utilizing a Bifactor Model in Validating the Malay version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-18 in Malaysian AdolescentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Muhammad,

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Qi Yuan

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the Ministry of Higher education (MoHE) Malaysia for enabling this research to be implemented and supported financially (Transdisciplinary Research Grant Scheme, TRGS/1/2020/UKM/01/4/1). "

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"Manisah Mohd Ali received a fund from Ministry of Higher education (MoHE) Malaysia (Project code: TRGS/1/2020/UKM/01/4/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript"

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Additional Editor Comments:

The article itself is interesting, but I also agree with the reviewer that it seems more like a traditional CFA paper. Please make necessary changes and also address the comments from the reviewers.

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: No

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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: 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: "Emotional regulation" refers to the ability to be self-aware, process emotions, and respond appropriately. The article advances our understanding of current issues with emotion regulation, particularly in adolescents. With a few simple adjustments, the paper could be made better.

1. There are a few grammatical errors, incorrect spacing, and a full stop throughout the paper.

2. There was inconsistency regarding the study sample size. For instance, 701, 700, and 689.

3. The paragraph on obtaining ethical approval should be under the heading "Ethical approval."

4. The authors stated that "A random stratified sampling was used to select the schools from each region." The authors should provide some information about this process.

Reviewer #2: Dear author

The following points are suggested

I am not agree with the title, you should structure it conventionally according to studies done worldwide about psychometric evaluation of instruments, why bifactors; this is a result from CFA, Please revise title by following conventional titles in this area!

Abstract

This section in all subsection should be revised and completed according to the following suggestions, for example methods subsection is not complete and you mentioned partly some aspects of psychometric analysis done on needed to be done.

I am not agree with predictive validity, it is criterion validity (divergent/convergent validity)

How about the test retest reliability results

The presented data about criterion validity is not correct, why r-squared not r and how about p-value for r.

Conclusion does not present any thing about construct validity.

not suitable keyword :Malay validation, validity or psychometric analysis, you can include Malesia as a keyword separately, use construct validity instead of confirmatory factor analysis

Introduction is very long, should be effectively shorten with more focuses on conducted studies worldwide about validity and reliability of DERS-18

Methods and results

Sampling methods to my view is not correct, if you used stratified sampling what were the strata? generally the participants section should be revised extensively by explaining the more and correct details about the sampling process.

instruments

Total scales wrong term?!

DERS-18 should be explained to the readers with more details from developers.

More details about psychometric properties of DASS-21 from Malesia are needed.

you explained very brief information about psychometric evaluation in statistical analysis subsection, you should subdivide this section into subsections with heading such as "construct validity" , internal consistency and item analysis" , "criterion validity" and explain the process for each of above procedures with more details,

Surprisingly a very important step i.e. test retest reliability has been missed,

Ceiling and flor effect evaluation have been missed,

How about the process of face and content validity evaluation and their results

For all above points i strongly recommend authors to see published papers on psychometric evaluation in good refereed journals for obtaining guides on how to write and complete the above mentioned shortfalls

I is expected to present a table explaining the study participants characteristics including basic such as age, gender, education,... and the mean scores of instruments subscales you used in this study,

Table 1 does not present informative data in the framework of psychometric analysis, particularly correlations.

The results about reliability analysis has major defects, the most important you did not follow the union approach for treating the awareness domain , you should follow the original version for scoring and then follow the reliability analysis, please revise and reconsider this very important point.

Skewness Kurtosis are not informative data in this regard.

Please present the results of test retest analysis.

Please (after reconsidering awareness domain) present CFA results in a suitable figure as is very common in this area of subject, the correct presentation as table is confusing.

Please follow my point regarding the criterion validity in abstract, and see published papers for getting guides on how to present and interpret the results of criterion validity.

Please present the results of Ceiling and flor effect evaluations.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Psychometric Properties of the Malay version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-18 in Malaysian Adolescents

PONE-D-22-33847R1

Dear Dr. Muhammad,

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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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,

Qi Yuan

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your revision. Please remember to address the minor comments from review 2 during proof.

Sincerely,

Qi

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

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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

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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: I am satisfied with the author's correction, and I believe the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Reviewer #2: Please mention undoing of test-retest reliability as a study limitation. Also, please mention undoing of content and face validity evaluation too.

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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: Yes: Dr.Awat Feizi

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