PONE-D-23-06364The Healthy Context Paradox of Adolescent Bullying Victimization and Academic Adjustment: A Moderated Mediation ModelPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gan,

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This research was supported by Youth project of Science and Technology Research Plan of Department of Education of Hubei Province in 2020 (Q20201306), the Social Science Fund Project of Yangtze University in 2022 (2022), the Faculty Scientific Fund Project of the College of Education and Sports Sciences of Yangtze University in 2022 (2022JTB01), and the key projects of education science plan of Hubei Province in 2022: Study on the influencing factors and intervention mechanism of non-suicidal self-injurious behaviors in adolescents (2022GA030). 

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

please reply point by point to the reviewers' comments.

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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: No

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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: 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

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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: Comments to authors:

I am pleased to receive the invitation to review this paper entitled " The Healthy Context Paradox of Adolescent Bullying Victimization and Academic Adjustment: A Moderated Mediation Model", which explores the relationship between bullying victimization and academic adjustment, as well as the mediating effects of subjective well-being and the moderating role of classroom-level victimization. My comments are as follows:

Introduction

(1) It would help if the author provides more theoretical and empirical base for the debate of “Healthy Context Paradox”.

Methods and results

(2) The authors should give more detailed information about their random cluster sampling process.

(3) The measures used in the study suffer from several drawbacks. The most important one is that it is unclear whether the classroom-level victimization variable is a class level measure or an individual level measure. It must be clarified at which level it has been measured and included in the model, and the modeling must adjust accordingly. In my view, the study could benefit from re-analysis using more appropriate and advanced statistical methods. The authors could have considered using multi-level models, also known as hierarchical linear models, to account for the potential issue of biased estimates or standard errors that can arise from traditional regression models.

(4) Bootstrap analysis could be helpful to test the mediating effect.

Discussion

(5) Please give more specific practical implications both on policy level and management level.

(6) In addition, there are some grammar errors in your manuscript. Please check it carefully.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript. Certainly, the topic is interesting, relevant and fits the contents of the magazine. I believe it has good potential and great practical relevance in the field of education. The origin of the students should be included in the title. The abstract defines conceptually different parts of the study and summarizing the content and objectives of the work, contains the required number of words and at least five keywords. Keywords refer to the most important variables or topics of the study. The justification explained in the manuscript is shallow, some references should be updated, and secondary citations are used. Occasionally, the writing is somewhat confusing (the information should be better organized, some ideas should be lightened, and the discourse should be coherent). The sample selection procedure should be better explained. The research hypotheses should be explained after stating the objectives. You should better explain the data analysis section and justify the statistics used. I consider that the practical relevance of the results found should be explained in greater depth, not simply describing them, but explaining their practical scope and justifying them according to previous empirical evidence. Sometimes a literal description of the results is made without a discussion of them. It would be important to include a section after the limitations that includes the main practical implications, in order to better organize the information of the work. I believe that it would also be interesting to include other variables that may be mediating the relationship between the variables. It would be interesting to explain the following statement in the text (page 19, lines 3-5): "This finding provided the first insight into the mechanisms underlying the healthy context paradox of bullying and academic adjustment, and shed light on how the classroom-level victimization affects the academic adjustment of victimized children”. On a formal level, the manuscript complies with the requirements of the Journal and references are written in accordance with the regulations of the Journal. It should indicate the exact location of tables and figures in the manuscript. You should revise some English expressions and phrases to make the text more coherent. The work is ambitious, and the results confirm most of the hypotheses and the relevance and potential of the work is therefore recognized, but this Reviewer considers that several changes are needed to the manuscript is publishable. In this sense, it should better explain the novelty and relevance of the work considering the previous empirical evidence and should better describe the practical implications, and the principal limitations. It should describe the discussion and conclusions of the work better and, above all, update the manuscript references (most should be from the last 5 years). Finally, I wish the Authors the best in continuing this line of research.

Best wishes for Authors.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: David Aparisi

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The Healthy Context Paradox of Bullying Victimization and Academic Adjustment Among Chinese Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Model

PONE-D-23-06364R1

Dear Dr. Gan,

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,

Gianpiero Greco

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

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript again.

Overall, the writing is clear, the goals are well described, well-considered introduction and the results properly made and presented. Therefore, the manuscript brings significant knowledge of the scientific literature so and still covers existing gaps in the field of Education. Therefore, my assessment is positive for the publication of this work, with a new suggestion.

Firstly, I would like to thank the efforts by the authors of the manuscript and congratulate them on the work. I recognize that they have considered almost all considerations of the Reviewers. Clearly, all the comments from Reviewers have contributed to a better quality of the manuscript. I have checked in the revised manuscript are corrected the most of errors found by the reviewers, both formally and content.

Secondly, I have verified that the information is presented in a clear and organized way in subtitles. It assumes good work with great potential.

Thirdly, in the Discussion section appears practical and educational implications and future directions correctly described. I have found the manuscript show a paragraph of study limitations. However, the conclusions section is somewhat concise. It is precisely a section to highlight the main practical implications of the study.

Fourthly, I have found that all the references are correctly written. The references are quite current, and all references comply with the Journal style.

Fifthly, I have verified that the format of the figures complies with the regulations of the Journal.

Finally, considering the changes made to the manuscript by the authors and the new suggestion, I consider that the manuscript can continue with the review process, considering the opinion and suggestions of other Reviewers.

Best wishes for Authors.

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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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