Investigating workplace bullying (WPB), intention to quit and depression among nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana

Emmanuel Dapilah; Andrews Adjei Druye

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0305026

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMay 22, 2024
28 Aug 2024 Decision Letter - Francesco Marcatto, Editor PONE-D-24-20237Investigating Workplace Bullying, Intention to Quit and Depression Among Nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dapilah, 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 Oct 11 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, Francesco Marcatto, Ph.D. 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 2. Please amend your authorship list in your manuscript file to include author Emmanuel Dapilah and Andrews Adjei Druye. 3. Please amend your manuscript to include your abstract after the title page. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. 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: Yes 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: Dear authors, Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to review this manuscript. It is well-written. However, there are some minor changes that I recommend making: 1. In the abstract, you mentioned using a multistage sampling technique, but in the methods section, you stated that a cluster sampling technique was used. Please ensure consistency in your approach. 2. In the data analysis section, you mentioned that the analysis was conducted to address research questions and hypotheses. However, there were no research questions or hypotheses presented in the manuscript. 3. Many studies cited in the literature review are outdated. Please provide justification for using older studies or update the literature review with more recent studies. Thank you for your attention to these suggestions. Reviewer #2: I have read with interest the manuscript titled ‘Investigating Workplace Bullying, Intention to Quit and Depression Among Nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana’, which presents a correlational study testing the relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention and depression among nurses in Ghana. I appreciated the rationales behind the research, indeed, replicating previous finding and extending them to diverse social and cultural contexts is important; however, I have some concerns about the current form of the manuscript, which I will outline below. My concerns are mainly focused on the rationales to include/exclude factors in the major statistical analyses and their theoretical importance. Indeed, I generally found that in their design and data analyses authors took into consideration some factors (e.g., registered general nurses vs. enrolled nurses, gender, age groups, rank) without these factors being necessarily introduced in the theoretical introduction. It is unclear what the literature says about the importance of these factors in the relationship between bullying and intentions to quit work and or depression among nurses. So, I found an inconsistency between some analyses (e.g., multiple linear regression) and theoretical background. I suggest that the authors explain in the theoretical introduction why these factors are important and explain why they were taken into consideration based on the literature of reference. As an example, as a reader I was (and still I am) unaware about the difference between registered general nurses and enrolled nurses. I think it is necessary to explain what the difference is and why this factor was taken into consideration. Is it important for the relationship between workplace bullying and the outcome variables? Or do the authors considered it in an exploratory fashion. The same rationales apply to age group, gender and rank position. Moreover, why the authors decided to collapse those specific age groups? What was the rationale? Why not to include age as a continuous variable if age is considered an important factor? Another point, on page 6 of the manuscript, the authors indicate that the questionnaire used can be found in Appendix A. However, downloading the supplementary materials, one does not find the questionnaire with the measures used, but other materials (e.g., Ethical clearance and Consent Form). While I found that, in the section describing the measures, there were enough information about how depression and intention to quit work were present, I suggest the authors to provide more information on the measure of workplace bullying. For example, does the NAQ-R tap into a single dimension or into several ones? If it has subscales, which dimensions they represents and why they were collapse into a single variable as specified at page 9 of the current manuscript. Also, I found it would be interesting for the reader to have examples of items if the questionnaire is not available as an appendix. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r001
Revision 1
16 Sep 2024 Author Response Response to reviewers’ comments Reviewer #1: Dear authors, Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to review this manuscript. It is well-written. However, there are some minor changes that I recommend making: 1. In the abstract, you mentioned using a multistage sampling technique, but in the methods section, you stated that a cluster sampling technique was used. Please ensure consistency in your approach. Response: Thank you for this observation. We have edited this portion to reflect the exact sampling technique i.e. stratified sampling and ensured its consistent usage across the manuscript. 2. In the data analysis section, you mentioned that the analysis was conducted to address research questions and hypotheses. However, there were no research questions or hypotheses presented in the manuscript. Response: we meant the analysis was done to address the purpose of the study. We have revised the manuscript to correct this. Thank you. 3. Many studies cited in the literature review are outdated. Please provide justification for using older studies or update the literature review with more recent studies. Response: we have replaced some of the old references where possible with current ones. Thank you for your attention to these suggestions. Reviewer #2: I have read with interest the manuscript titled ‘Investigating Workplace Bullying, Intention to Quit and Depression Among Nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana’, which presents a correlational study testing the relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention and depression among nurses in Ghana. I appreciated the rationales behind the research, indeed, replicating previous finding and extending them to diverse social and cultural contexts is important; however, I have some concerns about the current form of the manuscript, which I will outline below. My concerns are mainly focused on the rationales to include/exclude factors in the major statistical analyses and their theoretical importance. Indeed, I generally found that in their design and data analyses authors took into consideration some factors (e.g., registered general nurses vs. enrolled nurses, gender, age groups, rank) without these factors being necessarily introduced in the theoretical introduction. It is unclear what the literature says about the importance of these factors in the relationship between bullying and intentions to quit work and or depression among nurses. So, I found an inconsistency between some analyses (e.g., multiple linear regression) and theoretical background. I suggest that the authors explain in the theoretical introduction why these factors are important and explain why they were taken into consideration based on the literature of reference. As an example, as a reader I was (and still I am) unaware about the difference between registered general nurses and enrolled nurses. I think it is necessary to explain what the difference is and why this factor was taken into consideration. Is it important for the relationship between workplace bullying and the outcome variables? Or do the authors considered it in an exploratory fashion. The same rationales apply to age group, gender and rank position. Moreover, why the authors decided to collapse those specific age groups? What was the rationale? Why not to include age as a continuous variable if age is considered an important factor? Response: we appreciate your concerns. We have included some literature regarding the demographic factors. Though the demographic variables may play significant role in the relationship between WPB, depression, and intention to quit, they are not the primary factors in this study and only served as covariates. Also, the variable age was categorized into groups to ascertain if certain age groups will be more likely to be affected than others. For example, the literature shows that younger nurses and junior nurses have a higher propensity to leave the profession and to be bullied. Another point, on page 6 of the manuscript, the authors indicate that the questionnaire used can be found in Appendix A. However, downloading the supplementary materials, one does not find the questionnaire with the measures used, but other materials (e.g., Ethical clearance and Consent Form). While I found that, in the section describing the measures, there were enough information about how depression and intention to quit work were present, I suggest the authors to provide more information on the measure of workplace bullying. For example, does the NAQ-R tap into a single dimension or into several ones? If it has subscales, which dimensions they represents and why they were collapse into a single variable as specified at page 9 of the current manuscript. Also, I found it would be interesting for the reader to have examples of items if the questionnaire is not available as an appendix. Response: we have realized we did not attach the questionnaire as an appendix as indicated in the manuscript. Hence, we have attached the questionnaire in this revision as S1 Appendix A. Also, we have included adequate information on the measure of workplace bullying as suggested. Thank you for your input. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r002
24 Sep 2024 Decision Letter - Francesco Marcatto, Editor PONE-D-24-20237R1Investigating workplace bullying, intention to quit and depression among nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dapilah, 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. ============================== Dear Dr. Dapilah, Thank you for submitting the revised version of your manuscript. While the cover letter indicates that the paper has been updated according to the reviewers' comments, I was unable to find any changes addressing the feedback from Reviewer 1. Specifically, this includes: The description of the sampling technique, both in the abstract and the main text; The sentence about the research questions and hypotheses; The use of outdated literature. I kindly ask you to submit an updated version of your manuscript that incorporates these changes. Additionally, the acronym WPB is used in the text but is never explained. Please address this as well. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 08 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, Francesco Marcatto, 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r003
Revision 2
8 Oct 2024 Author Response Response to reviewers’ comments Reviewer #1: Dear authors, Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to review this manuscript. It is well-written. However, there are some minor changes that I recommend making: 1. In the abstract, you mentioned using a multistage sampling technique, but in the methods section, you stated that a cluster sampling technique was used. Please ensure consistency in your approach. Response: Thank you for this observation. We have edited this portion to reflect the exact sampling technique and stratified sampling and ensured its consistent usage across the manuscript. The sampling technique is mentioned in the abstract and described in the main text. A supplementary table of the nurses recruited from each of the eight hospitals has been added. 2. In the data analysis section, you mentioned that the analysis was conducted to address research questions and hypotheses. However, there were no research questions or hypotheses presented in the manuscript. Response: Thank you for this comment. We meant the analysis was done to address the study's purpose. We have revised the manuscript to correct this. We have stated the study's purpose and added the specific questions that it sought to answer. 3. Many studies cited in the literature review are outdated. Please provide justification for using older studies or update the literature review with more recent studies. Response: We appreciate your concerns about using outdated literature and have replaced several. Most of the citations are now within the last 10 years. However, few foundational studies have been cited since we needed to cite the original authors. Thank you for your attention to these suggestions. Reviewer #2: I have read with interest the manuscript titled ‘Investigating Workplace Bullying, Intention to Quit and Depression Among Nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana’, which presents a correlational study testing the relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention and depression among nurses in Ghana. I appreciated the rationales behind the research, indeed, replicating previous finding and extending them to diverse social and cultural contexts is important; however, I have some concerns about the current form of the manuscript, which I will outline below. My concerns are mainly focused on the rationales to include/exclude factors in the major statistical analyses and their theoretical importance. Indeed, I generally found that in their design and data analyses authors took into consideration some factors (e.g., registered general nurses vs. enrolled nurses, gender, age groups, rank) without these factors being necessarily introduced in the theoretical introduction. It is unclear what the literature says about the importance of these factors in the relationship between bullying and intentions to quit work and or depression among nurses. So, I found an inconsistency between some analyses (e.g., multiple linear regression) and theoretical background. I suggest that the authors explain in the theoretical introduction why these factors are important and explain why they were taken into consideration based on the literature of reference. As an example, as a reader I was (and still I am) unaware about the difference between registered general nurses and enrolled nurses. I think it is necessary to explain what the difference is and why this factor was taken into consideration. Is it important for the relationship between workplace bullying and the outcome variables? Or do the authors considered it in an exploratory fashion. The same rationales apply to age group, gender and rank position. Moreover, why the authors decided to collapse those specific age groups? What was the rationale? Why not to include age as a continuous variable if age is considered an important factor? Response: we appreciate your concerns. We have included some literature regarding the demographic factors. Though the demographic variables may play a significant role in the relationship between WPB, depression, and intention to quit, they are not the primary factors in this study and only served as covariates. Also, the variable age was categorized into groups to ascertain if certain age groups would be more likely to be affected than others. For example, the literature shows that younger and junior nurses have a higher propensity to leave the profession and be bullied. Another point, on page 6 of the manuscript, the authors indicate that the questionnaire used can be found in Appendix A. However, downloading the supplementary materials, one does not find the questionnaire with the measures used, but other materials (e.g., Ethical clearance and Consent Form). While I found that, in the section describing the measures, there were enough information about how depression and intention to quit work were present, I suggest the authors to provide more information on the measure of workplace bullying. For example, does the NAQ-R tap into a single dimension or into several ones? If it has subscales, which dimensions they represents and why they were collapse into a single variable as specified at page 9 of the current manuscript. Also, I found it would be interesting for the reader to have examples of items if the questionnaire is not available as an appendix. Response: We realized we did not attach the questionnaire as an appendix, as indicated in the manuscript. Hence, we have attached it in this revision as S1 Appendix A. Also, we have included adequate information on the measure of workplace bullying, as suggested. Thank you for your input. Note: Also, we have duly addressed the issue of the acronym WPB as it is used in the study i.e. Workplace bullying (WPB) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r004
16 Oct 2024 Decision Letter - Francesco Marcatto, Editor Investigating workplace bullying, intention to quit and depression among nurses in the Upper West Region of Ghana. PONE-D-24-20237R2 Dear Dr. Dapilah, 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 Editorial Manager® 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, Francesco Marcatto, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r005
Formally Accepted
18 Oct 2024 Acceptance Letter - Francesco Marcatto, Editor PONE-D-24-20237R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dapilah, 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. Francesco Marcatto Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305026.r006

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