PONE-D-23-17342Psychological detachment from work predicts mental wellbeing of working-age adults: findings from the ‘Wellbeing of the Workforce’ (WoW) prospective longitudinal cohort studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Blake,

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 Aug 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,

Mihajlo Jakovljevic, MD, PhD, MAE

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. Note from Emily Chenette, Editor in Chief of PLOS ONE, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director of Open Research Solutions at PLOS: Did you know that depositing data in a repository is associated with up to a 25% citation advantage (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416)? If you’ve not already done so, consider depositing your raw data in a repository to ensure your work is read, appreciated and cited by the largest possible audience. You’ll also earn an Accessible Data icon on your published paper if you deposit your data in any participating repository (https://plos.org/open-science/open-data/#accessible-data).

3. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process.

4. 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.]

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: I Don't Know

**********

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: No

**********

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: Overall this has been a comprehensive paper, covering key issues around the lockdown time periods during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a clearly articulated rationale for this study and it provides a novel contribution, which extends existing literature. The methods are appropriate for addressing the research questions and the response rates were good for a two wave study. Utilising measures with clearly defined cut off criteria enables the authors to articulate the impact on mental health in a robust manner. Utilising a two-wave study also enables the authors to demonstrate the impacts over time.

The analyses are robust, however, more sophisticated analyses are available to demonstrate these findings, such as multilevel modelling, with variables nested within time. This would have provided some additional robustness to the analyses. However, as I have said, the analyses are robust and appropriate for addressing the research question.

The discussion is comprehensive and provides a plausible explanation for the findings, acknowledging the complexities of the different way employees were working in the context of the pandemic and multiple lockdowns. There are clear links to wider implications around the impacts and benefits from work and what can be learned from the pandemic can apply to current working practices and policies.

Overall, this was a comprehensive and thorough paper which was informative and a pleasure to read and learn from.

I do have a couple of very small amendments which I recommend, listed below:

*PDF page 11 - Other studies, focused on healthcare workers, have shown a positive relationship between psychological detachment from work, job stress and workload[13,44] – Please clarify this statement. The ‘positive relationship’ suggests that as psychological detachment increases, so does job stress and workload, Did you mean positively buffers against the impact of?

*PDF page 19 – Something missing from this statement – is it 7.1%?: “At T2, we observed 7.1 (N=169) to report low psychological detachment from work.”

Reviewer #2: This submission presents The Wellbeing of the Workforce (WoW) study, a prospective longitudinal cohort study, which conducted over two waves of data collection corresponding with the first and third national COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK. By examining the levels of psychological detachment from work during the initial lockdown and its impact one year later. The research offers valuable insights into how detachment can influence mental health outcomes in unprecedented times. Overall, I think this is a very interesting and well researched piece of work. I have some questions about the research, which if addressed sufficiently, would cement the study's rigor and original insight this works brings. I list these below:

Introduction

1. Report on the level of detachment and its impact on well-being that is already know from the literature. For example, in the introduction when this "well established" literature is mentioned. Then in the Discussion (see point 16.) what your study shows in comparison to that and if under these unprecedented times the amount of detachment appeared different, were relationships on key outcomes stronger etc.

2. More information about the social model that you used. So more about what is it, what does to comprise of, and how did it inform your research.

Method and Results

3. I'd like to know more about which variables were non-normal and whether not bootstrapping and/or alternative analysis approaches were considered. Given the extreme of the situation, and variables being not 'normal', it might be reasonable that some of these variables be skewed and alternative statistical tests be selected. Adjusting the data to fit normal models may not be accepted as appropriate here. However, some detail on this in the analysis section to illustrate the rationale would be good (and/or in the Discussion).

4. Report the power of your results from the data you have.

5. Completion rate was reported as 100% for T1 and T2. Later, you mention "Completion rate was the ratio of the number of people who finished each survey divided by those who completed the first page of the survey." Why was this decision made rather than completion rate indicting those fully completed each survey, for example. I suggest clarifying what you mean by completion rate and why you have taken this approach (with references)

6. Early you stated you replaced missed data with means as it was less than 5%. This may need to be clarified as representing "of those that responded" as around half of your sample from T1 did not provide data in T2 and could also be considered missing.

7. Related to point above, if you are using all the data from T1 in analysis of the smaller proportion (around half) in T2, I take it you are not replacing the missing respondents data? In which case, showing the sample characteristics at T1 is important to add. Changes may have occurred for example, which may have implications you wish to highlight in the discussion (e.g. job changes).

8. It would be helpful to understand sample characteristics at T1 the sample used in T2 that was matched for the longitudinal. Namely, to see if anything had changed. Perhaps add another column to table 1 to show the T2 sample at T1.

9. Provide rationale for why "participants one standard deviation below the mean was used to provide a threshold to quantify low psychological detachment from work" and any references for others that also used this cut-off or suggest its use. As well as why it was necessary to create a dichotomous variable for this construct. Discussion of the potential limitations of this approach will need to be presented in the Discussion section as there is literature suggesting this may not be appropriate.

10. Is there a missing % here in the line: One-fifth of the sample (21.4%; N=337), at T1, reported low psychological detachment from work. At T2, we observed 7.1 (N=169) to report low psychological detachment from work." Is this 7.1%?

11. What was the amount of detachment of the sample used in T2 at time point 1? Were there any differences there?

12. Were there differences in any of the other characteristics that you gathered data on? E.g full-time workers, key/essential workers, etc?

13. Covariates in regression did not include other factors examined in previous section, some of which showed significant differences between work status groups, for example. There are also other characteristics of the groups where data was collected but this has not been included in the inferential analyses. Adding the reasons why these were not added in this results section would be helpful (or if these have not been considered, consider analysing them). I see a comment is mentioned in the Discussion but I think providing the descriptives for these on your outcomes of interest would be helpful in the Results section where you can also show the insufficient data to perform the further analyses (e.g. Essential/key workers) as mentioned in point 12.

Discussion

14. Minor point, it may get confusing talking about COVID waves and waves of data collection. Consider using alternative phrasing for one.

15. Link to the stressor-detachment model is good to see. However, you discuss home working, which you did not analyse. More direct links from your findings and the model are needed and associated implications from them.

16. Add details of how detachment levels in your research compare to pre-pandemic research and what may be drawn from that.

17.Add a comment about the generalisability of your research. Perhaps also to our 'new ways of working'.

**********

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: Yes: Dr Iain Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences (Learning and Teaching)

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.

Psychological detachment from work predicts mental wellbeing of working-age adults: findings from the ‘Wellbeing of the Workforce’ (WoW) prospective longitudinal cohort study

PONE-D-23-17342R1

Dear Dr. Blake,

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,

Laura Kelly, PhD

Division Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for your considered response to my comments and the changes that you have made to the manuscript. My initial thoughts were that the manuscript was strong to start with and these changes only make it stronger.

I think that this is a novel piece of research with will contribute significantly to the literature. It has been conducted rigorously, which is demonstrated through the extensive literature and methods underpinning this work.

Overall, this is a strong manuscript.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for responding to the comments. A very interesting and valuable piece of work. Thank you for sharing it with us.

**********

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: Yes: Dr Iain Wilson C.Psychol SFHEA, School of Social Sciences (Learning and Teaching), Nottingham Trent University

Reviewer #2: No

**********