Development of a new perceived injustice scale for Bangla speaking population

Chandrima Mourin; Muhammad Kamruzzaman Mozumder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0311272

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 18, 2024
29 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Palash Chandra Banik, Editor PONE-D-24-24368Development of a New Perceived Injustice Scale for Bangla Speaking PopulationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mozumder, 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 Sep 12 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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Reviewer #1: 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: The authors present the development process of a new type of psychological scale and expound on a relatively new psychological concept - perceived injustice. However, the article still requires further modification. 1. In the “background“ section or ”discussion“ section, the author should elaborate on what the specific applied values of "perceived injustice" and the "perceived injustice scale" are in clinical practice and psychological practice. Perceived injustice seems to hold a more significant position in social activities but has less evident roles in clinical applications. The author needs to further argue this point to alleviate the reader’s doubts. 2. The author mentions in the manuscript that there have been previous studies reporting scales related to 'perceived injustice'. Therefore, it is necessary to further elaborate on the similarities and differences between the old and new scales, as well as their respective advantages and disadvantages in practical applications. 3. When the Cronbach's alpha coefficient is excessively high, particularly above 0.95, it may indicate that the items in the scale are overly similar, leading to redundancy. In other words, this suggests that the scale may contain multiple items that measure the same issue, increasing the length of the scale without adding substantial information, thus reducing the efficiency of the assessment. Moreover, an overly high Cronbach's alpha may result from an overestimation of the inter-item correlations, leading to an overly optimistic appraisal of reliability. In the manuscript, the author reports a Cronbach's alpha of 0.971. A deeper analysis of the reasons behind this excessively high coefficient, the accuracy of the data, and considerations regarding whether some items should be removed is warranted. 4. In the “Participants“ section, the author estimated a minimum sample size of 226 participants, however, the actual effective sample size was merely 221, indicating that the sample size did not meet the projected requirement. Furthermore, the manuscript does not mention how many potential participants the researchers approached, how many declined to participate in the study, and how many were excluded and for what reasons. ****** 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 ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Review comment.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311272.r001
Revision 1
11 Sep 2024 Author Response Response to Reviewer Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: The authors present the development process of a new type of psychological scale and expound on a relatively new psychological concept - perceived injustice. However, the article still requires further modification. Thank you for reviewing the manuscript. We have addressed your recommendations which are presented int eh following section. 1. In the “background“ section or ”discussion“ section, the author should elaborate on what the specific applied values of "perceived injustice" and the "perceived injustice scale" are in clinical practice and psychological practice. Perceived injustice seems to hold a more significant position in social activities but has less evident roles in clinical applications. The author needs to further argue this point to alleviate the reader’s doubts. Response: Thank you for raising this important point. We were so much involved in the idea that we missed to indicates the applied aspects of the concept. We have added some texts to clarity this. Perceived injustice seemingly holds a more significant position as a social phenomenon. However, in recent time it is being discussed and studied as a novel and useful concept in medicine and psychiatry (7). (page 4, Introduction) Moreover, psychotherapeutic interventions (such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) are being tested and proven effective in reducing perceived injustice (10). (page 4, Introduction) With increasing recognition of perceived injustice as a relevant phenomenon in mental health, psychiatry and medicine (4, 7-10), the newly developed tool is expected to be welcomed among the researchers and clinicians from these field of study. (page 15, Discussion). 2. The author mentions in the manuscript that there have been previous studies reporting scales related to 'perceived injustice'. Therefore, it is necessary to further elaborate on the similarities and differences between the old and new scales, as well as their respective advantages and disadvantages in practical applications. Response: As this is a relatively novel concept, only few tools are available to measure this. A whole section discussed these tools and their context of development as well as prospective usage. To avoid a disproportionately long background section, only key features in a general manner has been discussed. However, in line with the suggestion, we have added the following sentence to further clarify their limitation. The tools for measuring perceived injustice as discussed above were developed to fit with specific contexts including chronic pain (11), war and conflict (12), or workplace (13). None of these seems to be a useful tool for assessing perceived injustice in a general context. (page 5) 3. When the Cronbach's alpha coefficient is excessively high, particularly above 0.95, it may indicate that the items in the scale are overly similar, leading to redundancy. In other words, this suggests that the scale may contain multiple items that measure the same issue, increasing the length of the scale without adding substantial information, thus reducing the efficiency of the assessment. Moreover, an overly high Cronbach's alpha may result from an overestimation of the inter-item correlations, leading to an overly optimistic appraisal of reliability. In the manuscript, the author reports a Cronbach's alpha of 0.971. A deeper analysis of the reasons behind this excessively high coefficient, the accuracy of the data, and considerations regarding whether some items should be removed is warranted. Response: We are thankful to you for this very important suggestion. As per your suggestion we have further analysed the data and was able to remove a several items. This resulted in a more succinct scale with ten items and we run the reliability and validity analysis again on this 10-item scale. Surprisingly, it not only made the tool more parsimonious, it also resulted in better validity outcome. High correlations (r ≥.8) indicate concerns of redundancy of items. Additionally, an initial assessment of internal consistency suggest that the 19-item scale would have an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .971 providing further indication of overly similar items. Therefore, to attain a parsimonious scale, further scrutiny of inter-item correlation matrix was carried out. Correlation coefficient was rounded to single decimal point and multiple items were found with overly high correlation. Item # 10 demonstrates high correlations (r ≥.8) with seven others items (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12) which also had high inter-correlation within themselves. Item # 16 shows similar high correlation with two other items (15 & 17). It was obvious that the two key items (10 & 16) would be able to represent the remaining and hence the nine items (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15 & 17) was removed. (page 10; Section: Inter-item Correlation) For changes in psychometric properties see page 2 (Abstract - Results), page 10 (Corrected Item-total Correlations) page 11 (Factor analysis), page 11-12 (Validity of the Perceived Injustice Scale) and page 12 (Reliability of the perceived injustice scale). 4. In the “Participants“ section, the author estimated a minimum sample size of 226 participants, however, the actual effective sample size was merely 221, indicating that the sample size did not meet the projected requirement. Furthermore, the manuscript does not mention how many potential participants the researchers approached, how many declined to participate in the study, and how many were excluded and for what reasons. Response: Data were collected from 225 participants (although the target was 226). However, 4 were discarded due to incomplete response. Thus, we fall short of only 5 participants, for which we could not wait any further as this study was done as academic research carried out within strict deadline. Furthermore, our statistical understanding suggests that shortage of 5 participants may not have much of negative impact on the rigor of any analysis conducted in this study. Approximately 250 participants were approached, 225 responded. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311272.r002
17 Sep 2024 Decision Letter - Palash Chandra Banik, Editor Development of a New Perceived Injustice Scale for Bangla Speaking Population PONE-D-24-24368R1 Dear Dr. Mozumder, 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, Palash Chandra Banik, MPhil Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311272.r003
Formally Accepted
24 Sep 2024 Acceptance Letter - Palash Chandra Banik, Editor PONE-D-24-24368R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mozumder, 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. Palash Chandra Banik Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311272.r004

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