PONE-D-23-12810Construct Validation and Measurement Invariance of the Parasocial Relationships in Social Media SurveyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rocconi,

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 esp. by the second reviewer.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 09 2024 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,

Frantisek Sudzina

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

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

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: Review of PONE-D-23-12810

This study is an examination of the psychometric properties of the Parasocial Relationships in Social Media (PRISM) scale. As such, the authors examine important components of a sound scale, including replication of the factor structure, convergent and discriminant validity, and measurement invariance. Some of the statistics used to evaluate the survey are beyond my expertise, but the authors explained most of them clearly and demonstrated the evidence that the measure is sound.

My major critique of this paper concerns the elements of the scale itself, in that they are not indicative of a relationship so much as an attitude of interest toward a celebrity. Only the items in the “Interaction With” scale (ironically, given the discussion in the literature regarding the difference between parasocial interactions and relationships), tap into the socioemotional basis of a relationship, and they are limited to friendship. This measure does not seem to allow for participants whose relationship with a media figure is romantic or that of a mentor/mentee (or anything other than friendship). In that sense, the notion that this survey measures PSR per se is as flawed as the measures (PSI, API) from which items were derived. If these relationships can “feel as real to viewers as real-life relationships” (p. 3) then why aren’t any of the items focused on identifying the social and emotional affordances of real relationships that are available in parasocial relationships? This scale appears to me not to measure an imagined relationship so much as a set of behaviors and attitudes connected to a media figure.

The introduction provides a rationale for the need for the scale as well as the study’s approach to examining its properties. The review section on Parasocial Relationships is also appropriate for this context, as is the description of previous work on the PRISM survey.

The method was a little odd in not starting with a description of the sample and in focusing on describing the analyses conducted, which I think of as information that typically appears in Results. Perhaps such a format is standard for measurement papers.

In the Results section, I was a little confused as to why a lack of correlation between the PRISM subscales and the year in which the participant first started following the celebrity was considered evidence of discriminant validity. Relationship models (for real relationships) emphasize not just frequency of interactions, but the duration of the relationship. Why wouldn’t the same be true for parasocial relationships?

Was “interact with” defined for participants? I’m not sure if it includes simply reading/watching the media figure’s posts or if, at minimum, the participant had to respond to the post in some way (like it) for that to count as an interaction—or perhaps it was left open to interpretation by the participant?

I might not fully understand the section on measurement invariance but if the sample was separated by platform used (YouTube v. Twitch), how would that work with so few people reporting that they followed their media figures on Twitch? Isn’t this comparison rather unbalanced?

Small things:

The second paragraph of the introduction in the section on Parasocial Relationships is enormous and covers multiple ideas. I suggest that it be split up. The end of this paragraph also states that the PRISM survey does not need to be modified for use in social media contexts, but it raised the question for me—why create a scale for use with social media rather than one that could be used for any context? Is that not possible? Does each context thus need its own survey instrument?

In Results, descriptions of the information presented in the tables should be adjacent to the tables themselves (e.g., discussion of measures of internal consistency, presented in table 2, came two pages later after table 4).

I noted a few typos throughout the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: 1.Currently, there are some establised PSI scales that have been widely adopted with high levels of reliability and validity, and some of them are developed within social media context, e.g. Dibble, J. L., Hartmann, T., & Rosaen, S. F. (2016). Parasocial interaction and parasocial relationship: Conceptual clarification and a critical assessment of measures . Regrettably, the introductory section lacks a clear delineation of the distinctive aspects of the authors' study and fails to elucidate the necessity for the re-creation of the scale.

2. While the literature review has touched upon differences between social media and traditional media, such as interactivity, the justification for the necessity of revising the scale remains insufficient. Further clarification is required regarding the theoretical significance and practical application value of this scale revision.

3.The demographic data for the sample should be provided in detail, outlining key demographic characteristics. Additionally, clear criteria for the selection of the 227 celebrities need to be explicitly stated.

4. The correlation of the Identification With dimension is notably low. Therefore, the need for revision of this dimension is a matter that requires further consideration in the data analysis.

5. The discussion section needs a more comprehensive elucidation of the theoretical significance and practical value of this study. Furthermore, limitations of the research and future prospects are currently lacking in sufficient detail.

**********

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.

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.

Construct Validation and Measurement Invariance of the Parasocial Relationships in Social Media Survey

PONE-D-23-12810R1

Dear Dr. Rocconi,

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,

Frantisek Sudzina

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: