PONE-D-23-06766Assessment of will from psychodynamic theory: The development of the Multidimensional Will Scale

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Bonacchi,

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.

Your work is truly valuable for the mental health community; reading it made me believe it should be considered. However, there are some significant issues that our exceptional specialist reviewer has pointed out regarding the logical flow and reliability of the psychometric data, which in this instance are of particular concern.

Please thoroughly review them and make the necessary adjustments and/or suitable clarifications.

After your submission of the revised manuscript,a second round of blind-review process will be run. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 14 2023 11:59PM

If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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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.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Silva Ibrahimi, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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: No

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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: Thank you for giving me this opportunity to review the manuscript (No: PONE-D-23-06766).

This study aimed to develop and validate a Multidimensional Will Scale (MWS). I applaud the authors’ efforts to identify the dimensions of will according to Assagioli’s model and develop the preliminary 38-item version of the MWS in three phases, examine the factor structure of the 38-item MWS using exploratory factor analysis (Study 1), and identify the best-fit model using confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2).

Major issues:

1. The item selection procedure and the cut-off values used to remove items are not indicated in lines 258 to 260. As a result, the decision to remove items 7, 16, and 27 because of the skewness and/or kurtosis values does not seem justifiable. The values were below 2.00 and are considered acceptable to some researchers. The authors are urged to explain the reason for using skewness and kurtosis, rather than factor loading, to determine the items that shall be removed. Finally, the kurtosis value of item 27 reported in line 276 is different from the value reported in S1 Table.

2. Lines 287 to 286, the number of factors to retain in the parallel analysis is not decided by the eigenvalue > 1 criterion, but by the number of eigenvalues (generated from the dataset) that are larger than the corresponding random eigenvalues.

3. Lines 291 to 292, “the analyses for a 31-item solution, with the number of factors fixed at five, were repeated.” The writing does not indicate whether the researchers delete one of the four items (i.e., items 18, 21, 29, 31) each time and then rerun the EFA. In addition, it is not justifiable to fix the number of factors. Note that the number of factors is likely to change when an item is removed.

4. Line 293, “IT12 (r=.31) has been eliminated as statistically non-significant.” It is not clear if the reported r-value refers to factor loading. Moreover, the authors did not mention that statistical significance is one of the criteria for determining item removal.

5. Lines 301 to 302, “The content analysis led to moving these two items from the Skillful to the Strong Will dimension” The writing seems to indicate that the authors think that it is acceptable to keep items 22 and 32 to Strong Will dimension. The items, however, were evaluated by experts and recommended to be loaded on Skillful Will dimension. The inconsistent decisions require further explanation.

6. Lines 319 to 320 and Lines 342 to 343, items 9 and 10 with a factor loading below 0.40 were not removed to maintain the Cronbach alpha. This practice, again, does not seem justifiable.

7. Lines 329, Is the result of the scree test consistent with the parallel analysis result? It is confusing why the authors referred to the scree test result.

8. Lines 506 to 513, items 10, 9, 22, and 34 were removed and the retained items were submitted to CFA. The CFA results shall be interpreted as exploratory rather than confirmatory. A new set of data shall be collected to confirm the revised structure/model.

Minor issue

1. The authors use the term will and volition in the literature review. It is important to clarify if the two terminologies are conceptually equivalent.

2. Lines 246 to 249, explain the reason to run two EFAs using PC and FA respectively.

I did not review the Discussion because the abovementioned major issues lead me to doubt the appropriateness of the selected items.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-23-06766R1Assessment of will from psychodynamic theory: The development of the Multidimensional Will ScalePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Bonacchi,

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. Based on our expert reviewers' comments and opinions the manuscript still need a throughout revision,especially in terms of a pure  psychodynamic background . Please also be sure to address the first reviewer concerns  as he highlighted. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 26 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.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Silva Ibrahimi, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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 #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (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 #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

**********

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 #2: ID: PONE-D-23-06766

Title: Assessment of will from psychodynamic theory: The development of the Multidimensional Will Scale

Thank you for providing a chance to review this manuscript.

Abstract

Overall: The Abstract is confusing, it is recommended to add subheadings in the order of “Background”, “Objective”, “Methods”, “Results”, and “Conclusion”, and to check whether each section is clearly explained.

Line 34, Page 2: “N=587; Mage=21.55, SDage=4.14, and N=683; Mage = 34.09, SDage = 16.27, respectively”, It is recommended to move to “Study 1” and “Study 2” respectively.

Line 34-42, Page 2: In addition to the results of the various analyses, the results of important statistical values are also those that should be presented in the abstract and the authors are invited to add them.

Introduction

Line 51-56, Page 3: What is the key meaning that needs to be conveyed in this paragraph? Why the sudden reference to “voluntary acts and behaviors enables scholars” when the importance and definition of will is being described? The author's presentation lacks clarity and focus on the topic.

Line 57-73＆Line 74-81, Page 2-3: The author devotes a tremendous amount of space to description in these two paragraphs, but still does not provide a clear answer to the question posed at the end of the previous paragraph, “Over time, numerous attempts have been made to define and discern between different conceptualizations of the will, willpower, and human volition”. At the same time, I don't think such a lengthy history of development is particularly relevant to your research background, and these two paragraphs need to be merged and greatly abbreviated.

Line 82-92, Page 4: The author’s research concepts seem to keep jumping around; what is the relationship between “volition” and “will”?

Line 98, Page 4: “That need to include the development of assessment tools”, your research focuses on tool development, please describe in detail. I don’t understand from your statement why there is a need to assess the development of tools?

Theoretical background: Assagioli’s model of will

Overall: Overall, the description of the theoretical framework could have been interspersed with the “Introduction”, and I do not see the need for it to be placed under a separate subtitle, which would be detrimental to the coherence of the contextualization.

Overall: Same problem, the description is too long, so detailed that the author can't catch the point, I suggest the author to make cuts.

Designing the Multidimensional Will Scale (MWS)

Overall: It is suggested that the presentation of the subtitle be modified by adding the specific steps of the research undertaken after “Phase I”, etc.

Phase I, Page 7-8: “In the first stage, the purpose was to adequately operationalize the construct to ensure face and content validity”, the description of the entire paragraph does not mention the tests and results of surface sanitization and content validity, which are necessary to be accounted for.

Overall: The authors describe multiple stages of modifying and validating the content of the scale, but how was the original pool of entries for the scale determined? The authors do not have a clear statement in this area.

Study 1: Testing and revising the Multidimensional Will Scale (MWS)

Participants and sample size, Page 9: The representation of the demographic characteristics of the sample is necessary. Authors were asked to add tables showing relevant data to demonstrate that the sample collected was representative.

Line 218-221, Page 9-10: “The sample size was established referring to the requirements to develop a scale through factor analysis that depends on the number and type of the items, the extent of correlations between items in the population, average commonality, the number of factors, and the stability of the factor structure”, what specific requirements have been complied with? How was the sample size synthesized? The authors should clearly list this.

Line 225-227, Page 10: “Approximately 66% of participants identified as cisgender women, 33% as cisgender men, and 1% preferred not to say. The majority were students (91%) from a large university in central Italy”, why is there such a large distribution of females and students, given that this is a survey facing an adult population? I question the representativeness of the sample. As well, the authors' sampling method was?

Line 236-237, Page 10: “A subsample of participants (N = 228; 39% of the original sample) completed the MWS again in a four-to-five-week interval”, what is the basis for determining the time interval?

Line 239-243, Page 10: “Otherwise, the arithmetic mean of each item replaced the missing data”, is there literature to support your choice of mean values to supplement missing values?

Item descriptives, Page 12-13: Is there a theory to support the decision to simply delete items when there is a deviation from normality? The test for normality may vary with the sample taken, and I don't think it's reasonable to handle it that way.

Overall: I do not believe that a discussion after only a preliminary analysis is necessary and suggest that the authors merge the discussion of the two parts of the study.

Study 2: Dimensionality, gender and age invariance, and validity of the Multidimensional Will Scale (MWS)Longitudinal invariance analyses of the Chinese EPDS

Measures, Page 18-20: Please list in detail the process of using the translation of the scale with validation in the local language.

Line 510-512, Page 21: What is the reason for choosing the change in CFI and RMSEA as the cutoff value for determining invariance?4

Line 564-565, Page 24＆Table 2, Page 25: “Results show an excellent fit of all tested models to the data, the differences in ΔCFI and ΔRMSEA values were lower than .01 and .015, respectively”, please check the data again, isn't the ΔCFI for scalar invariance in the age subgroup outside the recommended range?

Discussion, Page 28-30: The discussion is more of a restatement of the results, and the authors are advised to move to a deeper level of discussion.

Conclusion

Overall: The conclusion is not concise, it uses too much space and contains too much content, and the author is advised to rewrite it, preferably in two to three sentences.

This study is innovative and fills the research gap in this field. However, it still has certain shortcomings. The article structure of this paper has a big problem, which is confusing and unsystematic, and needs a big change; and the author's account is more confusing, unable to catch the key points, and using too much space, which needs to be partially reduced. At the same time, there are certain problems at the research design and data analysis. I am sorry to give the decision of rejection and look forward to seeing the progress of this manuscript.

Thank you and my best,

Your reviewer

Reviewer #3: The authors need to more fully explain the theoretical model on which they are basing their study, and the relevance of the research as designed and conducted. It is also important to correct the presumption that this an empirical study of psychodynamic psychotherapy--psychosynthesis holds very little concordance with psychoanalysis/psychodynamic psychotherapy even though its founder studied psychoanalysis.

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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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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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-23-06766R2The development of the Multidimensional Will ScalePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Bonacchi,

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 Jun 03 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yansong Li

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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.

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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 #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #4: (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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #2: ID: PONE-D-23-06766R2

Title: The development of the Multidimensional Will Scale

Thank you for providing a chance to review this manuscript.

Recommendation: Minor revise.

The author has made careful revisions and responses, and the quality of the article has improved considerably. Congratulations! I have only the following minor issues to express my doubts:

Detailed information:

Title

Overall: Personally, I think the overly short title does not reflect the specificities of your study.

Abstract

Overall: Formatting issues need more attention, such as spaces before and after “=”, italicizing “N”, etc.

Overall: “(TLI = .91; CFI = .93; RMSEA = .06 [90%CI: .06‒.07])”, note the explanation of abbreviations when they are used for the first time.

Step 2: Results:

Overall: Why don't you use charts and graphs to show the results of the EFA more clearly, instead of using complex textual representations?

Step 3: Method

Overall: Why is it not consistent here with the previous text, with subheadings separating the analyzed sections.

Step 3: Discussion

Overall: An account of the research highlights, limitations, and future research directions related to this study is lacking and should be added.

Thank you and my best,

Your reviewer

Reviewer #4: Abstract:

• The sample needs labeling, such as Sample 1, Sample 2, to clarify whether there is any overlap between samples. Subsamples should also be coded for clarity, as the current description can lead to confusion.

• In the abstract, Step 2 needs a clearer description detailing the number of factors identified and their respective names.

• The presentation of the CFI model parameters is incomplete.

• The reliability section should specify the exact values for clarity and precision.

Introduction:

• The introduction contains an excessive focus on philosophical concepts and history, with a noticeable lack of recent psychological research on will.

• There is an absence of mention of other will-related questionnaires, multidimensional scale and psychological variables related to will (e.g., variables from questionnaires used as benchmarks). Recommend papers:

Reise, S. P., Bonifay, W. E., & Haviland, M. G. (2013). Scoring and Modeling Psychological Measures in the Presence of Multidimensionality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 95(2), 129–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2012.725437

Osman, A., Lamis, D. A., Freedenthal, S., Gutierrez, P. M., & McNaughton-Cassill, M. (2014). The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support: Analyses of Internal Reliability, Measurement Invariance, and Correlates Across Gender. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(1), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2013.838170

Wang, Y., Orosz, G., Chen, X., Miao, C., & Li, Y. (2024). Psychometric evaluation of the Chinese version of the Multidimensional Competitive Orientation Inventory. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 6591.

Step 1:

• A critical ratio analysis is necessary to demonstrate the item discriminability for each question.

Step 2:

• The sample exhibits a gender imbalance that needs addressing.

• The reported degrees of freedom (df) value for Bartlett’s test of sphericity appears unusual and should be verified.

Step 3:

• The rationale for item deletion needs to be more comprehensive to justify the decisions made during this step.

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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 #2: No

Reviewer #4: 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.

Measuring Strong, Skillful, Good and Transpersonal Will: The development of the Multidimensional Will Scale

PONE-D-23-06766R3

Dear Dr. Bonacchi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Yansong Li

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE