PONE-D-23-31342The self-reported driving and pedestrian behaviour of adults with Developmental Coordination DisorderPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wood,

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.

ACADEMIC EDITOR: 1. Clarify Study Objective: The objective of the study needs to be clearly defined. Understanding self-reported behavior should be framed within a broader, clearly articulated objective (required for acceptance).

2. Methodology and Data Collection: Address concerns about the appropriateness of the methodology, especially regarding the reliance on self-reported behaviors. Clarify the sampling method used and its adequacy for the study's goals (required for acceptance).

3. Representation of Previous Studies: Accurately and clearly represent previous studies in the field, highlighting the novel aspects of the current study (required for acceptance).

4. Consistency and Reliability of DBQ and PBQ: Ensure and demonstrate the consistency and reliability of responses in the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) and Pedestrian Behaviour Questionnaire (PBQ) (required for acceptance).

5. Gender Distribution Control: Explain how the differences in gender distribution between DCD and non-DCD samples were accounted for in the study (required for acceptance).

6. Detailed Analysis of DCD Group: Provide more detailed information about the group with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), including inclusion criteria and any co-occurring conditions (recommended modifications).

7. Recruitment Methods for Both Groups: Elaborate on how the DCD group and the control group were recruited, ensuring transparency in the process (recommended modifications).

8. Influence of Age and Driving Experience: Investigate and discuss how age or years of driving experience might influence confidence or behavior, especially in the DCD group (recommended modifications).

9. Limitations of Self-Report in Study Design: Include a discussion on the limitations of self-reporting, particularly in the context of comparing lab-based and real-world situations (recommended modifications).

10. Aggregation of Questions within Constructs: Clarify how questions within the same construct were aggregated and the impact of this approach on statistical power (recommended modifications). 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 06 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,

Marcus Tolentino Silva, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal requirements:

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

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

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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: 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: 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: This is an interesting paper which addresses an area of research which is understudied. The manuscript is well written and clear in the methodologies used, however, it is lacking in detail in places and I think a more detailed analysis of the data would really support the conclusions. There are also some other points that I would like the authors to consider before I would be happy to accept this paper for publication:

1. I don't believe the authors have well represented some of the previous studies within this field. For example, the Wilmut and Purcell study cited did consider confidence and also adherence to road regulations (waiting for the green man etc) - what this paper adds that the previous paper did no consider was an inclusion of a control group. These nuanced differences should be really clear so that there is a clear and accurate novelty of the study. This is just one example, a discussion of the relevant papers in more depth would really support the argument for the study.

2. I would like to know more about both groups. Firstly the group with DCD - what information was given with regards to this, did these individuals have to have a diagnosis of DCD or just suspect that they had DCD? Where any co-occurrences present? This is particularly important as previous work have considered the co-occurrence of ADHD and ASD in road crossing behaviour and so if this study did not consider those co-occurrences some mention of this should be provided in the discussion.

3. I would also be interested to know how the two groups were recruited - through the same means? Or were the control group individuals known to the researchers - very little information is given about this.

4. I wonder whether age or years driving influences confidence or behaviour? This is a statistical consideration that the authors have not included - but I would imagine confidence, especially in driving might increase with age in controls - what is the relationship in the DCD group.

5. I was really pleased to see that the authors made comparisons between lab based (no risk) and real world situations. However, no discussion is included regarding the limitations of self-report in this context.

Reviewer #2: This study investigated the differences between the behaviours of drivers and pedestrians with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). While the study subject is very interesting, there are major flaws with the study:

- The objective of the study is not clear. Understanding self-reported behaviour of a group of drivers and pedestrians is not an objective, but a task. What is it that the authors aim to understand (fundamentally) using these self-reported behaviours?

- The methodology is not appropriate to address the research gap. As I understand from the manuscript, the identified research gap is that most studies have investigated the behaviours of DCD drivers and pedestrians in simulated environments, which may not be exactly the same as in real-world environments. However and as the authors have mentioned themselves, studying self-reported behaviours has biases and lack of reliability as well. How can the authors claim that studying self-reported behaviours is addressing the gap above?

- Reliance on self-reported behaviours is even more acute when it comes to the DCD people. As the authors have mentioned, DCD is a neurodevelopmental disorder which, in addition to impaired motor control, may impact cognitive functionality (e.g. spatial awareness, ability to judge distances, reaction time, ability to process multiple stimuli) too. This essentially creates a chicken-egg problem. The self-reported behaviours may well have been influenced by these cognitive disabilities.

- What sampling method was used to collect data? From what I can see, the authors have used convenience sampling, which is characterized with insufficient power to identify differences between population subgroups.

- The gender distribution is very different among the DCD and non-DCD samples. How did the authors control for that?

- The DBQ and PBQ have many items within the same construct. I cannot see the consistency and reliability tests for these items. Did the authors ensure consistency and reliability in the responses?

- The DBQ and PBQ have many items within the same construct. I can see that the authors have applied the Mann-Whitney tests on the whole construct (e.g. errors, lapses, etc.) but how did they aggregate the questions within he same construct? Did they take the average (which by and of itself may have resulted in lack of statistical power).

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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

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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.

PONE-D-23-31342R1The self-reported driving and pedestrian behaviour of adults with Developmental Coordination DisorderPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wood,

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 Apr 07 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,

Marcus Tolentino Silva, 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.

Additional Editor Comments:

1. Explicitly articulate the rationale behind the significance and contribution of your work in the manuscript.

2. Ensure this discussion directly responds to the reviewer's comment, highlighting the novelty and utility of your findings.

3. Include a clear justification and discussion of your use of convenience sampling within the manuscript.

4. Discuss the implications of this sampling method on the validity and generalizability of your results.

5. If applicable, describe any strategies employed to mitigate potential biases associated with convenience sampling.

6. Clarify how questions within the same construct were aggregated.

7. Provide justification for this methodological choice, if not already done, to enhance the reader's understanding of your analytical approach.

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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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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 would like to thank the authors for addressing my comments, I am happy to recommend this for publication

Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing my comments. However, in addition to the response letter, the authors must bring their responses in the manuscript as well:

• I would like to see the authors reasoning on the value of their work (i.e. their response to my second comment) in the manuscript as well. I think this is a key discussion that must be in the manuscript to pinpoint the contribution of this work.

• Likewise, the authors must bring the discussion around convenience sampling inside the manuscript too.

• The way they have aggregated the questions within the same construct (taking the average) must be stated in the manuscript 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: 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 self-reported driving and pedestrian behaviour of adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder

PONE-D-23-31342R2

Dear Dr. Wood,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Marcus Tolentino Silva, Ph.D.

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: No

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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

**********

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 didn't raise any issues in this second round and so I have nothing to comment on - I am still happy to recommend this paper for publication

Reviewer #2: I have no further comments, thank you for your efforts to address my comments.

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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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