Identifying multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes like park use: A comparison of conditional and marginal modeling approaches

Marilyn E. Wende; S. Morgan Hughey; Alexander C. McLain; Shirelle Hallum; J. Aaron Hipp; Jasper Schipperijn; Ellen W. Stowe; Andrew T. Kaczynski

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0301549

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 17, 2023
14 Feb 2024 Decision Letter - Sathishkumar Veerappampalayam Easwaramoorthy, Editor PONE-D-23-37844Identifying multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes like park use: A comparison of conditional and marginal modeling approachesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wende, 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 Mar 30 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. 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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 2. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: This study was supported by the National Cancer Institute (www.cancer.gov) under Award number R21CA202693 (PI: Andrew Kaczynski). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The funding agency did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Please provide an amended statement that declares all the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. In the online submission form, you indicated that Data from the ParkIndex study will be made available upon request, submitted via email to the corresponding author. Data cannot be shared publicly because home addresses or location data is included in this dataset, but can be de-identified or removed upon request for specific research application. SAS code for this research is provided as a supplemental file with this manuscript. All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either a. In a public repository, b. Within the manuscript itself, or c. Uploaded as supplementary information. 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Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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: Yes 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: Comments to Authors, This observational study looks at the predictors of park use, combining data from park characteristics, census block groups, and individual survey data. This use of multi-level data, the comparison of conditional and marginal modelling approaches, and the application of cross validation make this an interesting study that would have value to the scientific community. Additionally, the authors laid out the assumptions for each model which is valuable. The two weaknesses in the study that I found were both beyond the control of the authors. First, the study is observational rather than causal, so the usual caveats about observational studies apply. However, observational studies are still very valuable. Second, the authors do not have data regarding children in the household which I believe would be an important predictor of park use. These issues do not change my view that the study is publishable. Suggestions or things to consider: 1. Abstract sentence 1 and throughout the rest of the paper I suggest that you change “marginal and conditional approaches” to “marginal and conditional modeling approaches” which is how you state it in the title and several other places. 2. Explanatory Measures – Participant Level page 6. Was gender dichotomized because the only responses were male/female or is that how it appeared on the survey? If it appears on the survey that way, then that may explain some of the missing gender responses. Gender is not dichotomous. Nothing to do here, but something to consider for future research. 3. Explanatory Measures. Is there an omitted variable problem since there is no data on whether or not a respondent has school age children? This seems like a determinant of park use. Given the data, I understand that it cannot be controlled for at this point. Does it merit comment? 4. Statistical Analysis page 7. I am fine with the hot deck imputation, but later in the Discussion (page 3) you state that the imputation helps minimize bias. Are the results very different without the imputation? 5. Sample Characteristics section. Could you add some park descriptive statistics? 6. Sample characteristics page 11. The sample is skewed very female. Does this deserve comment? 7. Model Specifications page 11. Can you add to this single sentence section? Can you provide context for the size of this effect? It would be helpful if this were explained more. 8. Discussion page 2. “The goal of this research … so the marginal model may be preferable for interpretation purposes.” Should this also be mentioned earlier such as in the introduction or where you are describing the two types of models? Minor Comments: 9. In the abstract, it would be easier to follow for the reader if you just stated that the marginal model found the same predictors as the conditional model, except for park size. 10. Introduction page 1, “In general, there are two types …” to “In general, there are two popular types … “ since there are other possible approaches. 11. Introduction page 2. Typo – “used such methods control” to “used such methods to control” 12. Explanatory Measures page 4. Typo change “eac” to “each”. 13. Data Collection page 4. The last sentence says “This sequence was repeated until … “ What, specifically does the sequence refer to? The entire postcard sequence or just the identification of parks visited? 14. page 9. I am not a big fan of stepwise selection since it highlights sample idiosyncrasies, however I am fine with it since you also present the full model results. Do not cut out the full model results. 15. Sample characteristics page 10. Table 1 is in an odd place, but you will fix that in publication. 16. Discussion page 1. “… park acreage on park use in the conditional model were marginal.” Please choose a different word than marginal here since we don’t want to confuse it with the marginal model. 17. Discussion page 1. “… proximity and park use.33” I don’t know what the 33 is for. Reviewer #2: The authors have studied the marginal and the conditional approaches for identifying individual, park, and neighborhood park use predictors. There are some collected results in this study however there are some drawbacks that the authors should address them to improve this study. 1.In the introduction, the main contribution of this study must be provided to outline the prioritization of this comparative work. 2.The proposed models about multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes must be provided in this study. 3.The description of dataset must be indicated and presented through the distribution areas as well as the specific database. 4.The collected results must be presented through the distributive data figures. 5.The comparative methods must be implemented in the discussion. 6.The novelty points of this study must be indicated clearly in the conclusion part. ****** 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. 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Revision 1
12 Mar 2024 Author Response Response to Review Manuscript: PONE-D-23-37844 Title: Identifying multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes like park use: A comparison of conditional and marginal modeling approaches Thank you to the reviewers for their helpful feedback on our manuscript. The original reviewer comments are listed below followed by our responses preceded by “Response:”. All major changes have been highlighted in the text of the revised paper. Reviewer #1: This observational study looks at the predictors of park use, combining data from park characteristics, census block groups, and individual survey data. This use of multi-level data, the comparison of conditional and marginal modelling approaches, and the application of cross validation make this an interesting study that would have value to the scientific community. Additionally, the authors laid out the assumptions for each model which is valuable. Response: Thank you for your positive remarks. The two weaknesses in the study that I found were both beyond the control of the authors. First, the study is observational rather than causal, so the usual caveats about observational studies apply. However, observational studies are still very valuable. Second, the authors do not have data regarding children in the household which I believe would be an important predictor of park use. These issues do not change my view that the study is publishable. Response: Thank you for your analysis of the weaknesses of this research. While we agree that additional research including prospective data collection and the participation of children is important, it is outside the scope of the current research (as you’ve pointed out). Suggestions or things to consider: 1. Abstract sentence 1 and throughout the rest of the paper I suggest that you change “marginal and conditional approaches” to “marginal and conditional modeling approaches” which is how you state it in the title and several other places. Response: Thank you for this comment. We have updated this wording in the abstract (page iii, lines 3-4) and throughout the manuscript. 2. Explanatory Measures – Participant Level page 6. Was gender dichotomized because the only responses were male/female or is that how it appeared on the survey? If it appears on the survey that way, then that may explain some of the missing gender responses. Gender is not dichotomous. Nothing to do here, but something to consider for future research. Response: Thank you for this comment. We have explained in the methods (page 6, line 5) that “other” was included as an option. That said, no respondents chose this category so it was not included in the tables. To clarify, we have included “other” in Table 1 with no responses. 3. Explanatory Measures. Is there an omitted variable problem since there is no data on whether or not a respondent has school age children? This seems like a determinant of park use. Given the data, I understand that it cannot be controlled for at this point. Does it merit comment? Response: Unfortunately, this question was not included for our online survey. We did ask participants who they visited each park with but given that question was specific to each park and had a high level of missingness we chose to exclude it from the current analysis. That said, we agree that additional consideration should be made about living with school-aged children in future research on this topic. 4. Statistical Analysis page 7. I am fine with the hot deck imputation, but later in the Discussion (page 3) you state that the imputation helps minimize bias. Are the results very different without the imputation? Response: Although results were similar using imputed and non-imputed datasets, imputation was used to reduce selection bias due to non-response and ensure we had the power to compare the two models under study accurately. Generally, imputation is used to minimize bias in these forms, so we think it is wise to use imputed data for this analysis. 5. Sample Characteristics section. Could you add some park descriptive statistics? Response: We have added park characteristics to page 10, lines 10-15 and in Table 1. 6. Sample characteristics page 11. The sample is skewed very female. Does this deserve comment? Response: We have included this as a limitation in this study, as we agree that readers should consider this when interpreting results (see page 18, lines 21-23 to page 19, lines 1-2). 7. Model Specifications page 11. Can you add to this single sentence section? Can you provide context for the size of this effect? It would be helpful if this were explained more. Response: We have added additional explanation on page 11, lines 4-6. 8. Discussion page 2. “The goal of this research … so the marginal model may be preferable for interpretation purposes.” Should this also be mentioned earlier such as in the introduction or where you are describing the two types of models? Response: This has been previously mentioned on page 2, lines 7-8. Minor Comments: 9. In the abstract, it would be easier to follow for the reader if you just stated that the marginal model found the same predictors as the conditional model, except for park size. Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have updated the wording on page iii, lines 14-17. 10. Introduction page 1, “In general, there are two types …” to “In general, there are two popular types … “ since there are other possible approaches. Response: We have added this clarification to page 1, lines 22-23. 11. Introduction page 2. Typo – “used such methods control” to “used such methods to control” Response: We have added this correction to page 2, line 14. 12. Explanatory Measures page 4. Typo change “eac” to “each”. Response: We have added this correction to page 4, line 20. 13. Data Collection page 4. The last sentence says “This sequence was repeated until … “ What, specifically does the sequence refer to? The entire postcard sequence or just the identification of parks visited? Response: The sequence referred to identifying parks they used and answering questions about them, not the entire postcard process. We have changed the wording on page 4, lines 11-14 to clarify this. 14. page 9. I am not a big fan of stepwise selection since it highlights sample idiosyncrasies, however I am fine with it since you also present the full model results. Do not cut out the full model results. Response: We agree that it is important to include both full and reduced model results, which are presented in Table 2. 15. Sample characteristics page 10. Table 1 is in an odd place, but you will fix that in publication. Response: We agree that this must be adjusted for final publication. 16. Discussion page 1. “… park acreage on park use in the conditional model were marginal.” Please choose a different word than marginal here since we don’t want to confuse it with the marginal model. Response: Thank you for this comment. We agree that the wording should be changed from “marginal” to “modest” on page 16, line 6. 17. Discussion page 1. “… proximity and park use.33” I don’t know what the 33 is for. Response: We have corrected this error on page 16, line 17. Reviewer #2: The authors have studied the marginal and the conditional approaches for identifying individual, park, and neighborhood park use predictors. There are some collected results in this study however there are some drawbacks that the authors should address them to improve this study. 1.In the introduction, the main contribution of this study must be provided to outline the prioritization of this comparative work. Response: Thank you for this comment. We have provided more detail on the main contribution of this study on page 3, lines 1-4. 2.The proposed models about multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes must be provided in this study. Response: Response: Details on the models being compared in this study are provided in the Statistical Analysis section, on page 7 line 4 to page 10 line 3. 3.The description of dataset must be indicated and presented through the distribution areas as well as the specific database. Response: We have now provided the data for readers to access, and a description of the dataset has been provided on page 6, lines 7-17. We have also added information on the distribution of participants across study sites in Table 1. 4.The collected results must be presented through the distributive data figures. Response: We have included data figures as supplemental file 2, which is a figure that represents the results presented in Table 2. If we did not interpret this comment correctly, we would happily make additional revisions. 5.The comparative methods must be implemented in the discussion. Response: We have provided an analysis of our findings and how it relates to past research on page 16, lines 1-23 to page 17, lines 1-18. This also includes narration on the importance of the ten-fold cross-validation methods we used to compare the two modeling approaches. If the reviewer is looking for a specific change related to the discussion of comparative methods in the discussion, we would be happy to consider it. 6.The novelty points of this study must be indicated clearly in the conclusion part. Response: We have added commentary on the novelty of this study on page 19, lines 16-18. Thank you for your comment. In conclusion, thank you to the reviewers for providing constructive feedback on this research. With these changes, we believe we have responded to and addressed all the identified concerns and that the updated manuscript has been improved substantially due to our collective efforts. If further revisions are required, we would be happy to consider them. Again, thank you for the opportunity to resubmit our manuscript to PLOS ONE and we look forward to hearing back from you soon. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Review PONE-D-23-37844 2024.3.11.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301549.r002
18 Mar 2024 Decision Letter - Sathishkumar Veerappampalayam Easwaramoorthy, Editor Identifying multilevel predictors of behavioral outcomes like park use: A comparison of conditional and marginal modeling approaches PONE-D-23-37844R1 Dear Dr. Wende, 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, Sathishkumar Veerappampalayam Easwaramoorthy 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: (No Response) ******** 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: (No Response) ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: (No Response) ****** 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 Response) ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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 ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301549.r003
Formally Accepted
4 Apr 2024 Acceptance Letter - Sathishkumar Veerappampalayam Easwaramoorthy, Editor PONE-D-23-37844R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wende, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Sathishkumar Veerappampalayam Easwaramoorthy Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301549.r004

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