PONE-D-22-01686Validation of a culturally adapted Swedish-language version of the Death Literacy IndexPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Johansson,

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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Vilfredo De Pascalis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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“The authors would like to acknowledge the generous contributions by Aleksandra Sjöström-Bujacz, Leo Kowalski, and Sara Runesdotter to the statistical analyses. We also acknowledge the contribution of Terese Stenfors during the translation of the DLI-S.”

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“This study was funded by Strategic Research Area Health Care Science (SFO‐V), Karolinska Institutet; the Doctoral School in Health Care Sciences, Karolinska Institutet; Swedish Research Council for Health, Welfare and Working Life (FORTE); Stockholm City Elder Care Bureau; and Stockholm Gerontology Research Center. The funders had no part in, nor influence on, the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of results.”

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Additional Editor Comments:

Both reviewers consider the manuscript positively, although both suggested a revision; I invite the authors to solve all the raised issues and resubmit the revised version for publication acceptance.

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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: 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: 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: Hello

Thank you for writing the manuscript. It was well-done. But there are some issues in which to be clarify for publication:

1. The manuscript should be completed more. Reader need to know more about DL and DLI.

2. Materials and Methods: It is not complete because the process of Beaton et al. has not been completed. Why?

3. Materials and Methods: study design is not correct.

4. Usually Survey methods for harmonization of a scale or test are not valid.

5. How did you control inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants?

6. There are not inclusion and exclusion criteria in the text.

7. I didn't find psychometric parameters of the original scale, and authors didn't compare their data with it too.

8. In discussion, authors don't have any comparison perspective for their data. It is the base for discussion section.

Reviewer #2: The study translates and culturally adapts DLI into Swedish language and assess its validity. It is an interesting construct and professionally written. Few comments for the authors.

Abstract

i. Please provide the content validity index and fit indexes value(s) in the abstract.

Methods

i. Can you provide one or two sentences about the validity of the original DLI.

ii. Is it possible to merge all phases and sub-phases' data analysis together?

iii. It will be good to perform exploratory factor analysis in addition to confirmatory factor analysis. This will tell the reader the best model supported by the current data.

Results

i. Can you move 'scale descriptives' up? i.e. before 'reliability' results.

Discussion

i. Can you change the sub-title 'Methodological discussion' to 'strength and limitation'?

See other comments in the attached.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-01686_reviewer.pdf

PONE-D-22-01686R1Validation of a culturally adapted Swedish-language version of the Death Literacy IndexPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Johansson,

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.

Reviewers and myself are generally glad of the revised version of the manuscript. However, both reviewers raised some minor issues that must be addressed before the acceptance.

Thus, I invite the authors to make the suggested minor changes and resubmit their paper for the final decision.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 16 2023 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,

Vilfredo De Pascalis

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Reviewers and myself are generally glad of the revised version of the manuscript. However, both reviewers raised some minor issues that must be addressed before the acceptance.

Thus, I invite the authors to make the suggested minor changes and resubmit their paper for the final decision.

[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: (No Response)

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: 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

**********

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: Thank you to let me to review the manuscript. The manuscript has been written well and all psychometric parameters have been considered. Results are acceptable.

My comments are:

1. Introduction: Although you have mentioned about other language versions of the scale, but there are not any data about them. The are necessary

2. Methods:

. Survey panel characteristics are not enough. It needs to be explained more.

. The method of translation and adaptation should be more precisely. Authors have pointed to multi-step mixed methods approach, but without any explanation about it.

3. Results:

. Authors should explain why they didn't do exploratory factor analysis.

4. discussion:

. There isn't any comparison between results of the present study and other language versions.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has improved. There are two discrepancies noticed in the abstract, text body, table 4 and figure 2 which have not been attended to.

1. The sub scale alpha ranges between 0.81 and 0.92. Please correct it in the abstract and results sections (0.81 - 0.93).

2. The correlations between factors range between 0.40 and 0.86 in figure 2. Please correct it under results section (0.43 - 0.86).

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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.

Validation of a culturally adapted Swedish-language version of the Death Literacy Index

PONE-D-22-01686R2

Dear Dr. Johansson,

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,

Vilfredo De Pascalis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have made adequately all the suggested changes. Thus, I think that the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

I am sorry that the revision process took a long time. We finally reached a favorable decision.

My congratulations to the authors.

Reviewers' comments: