PONE-D-24-14873Parental Considerations About Their Childs’ Mental Health: Validating the German Adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning QuestionnairePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wildner,

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 Jul 27 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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Ted C.T. Fong, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Specific comments to Author:

- Line 164: Remove the model fit criteria "e CFI > .90, TLI > .90, SRMR < .09, and RMSEA < .08", the criteria on line 165 "CFI > .95, TLI > .95, SRMR < .08, and RMSEA < .06" refers to good model fit. Same for the model fit on lines 186-187.

- Report the skewness and kurtosis of the PRFQ items. Were they treated as continuous items in the factor analysis? Please state clearly.

- The authors should present the final factor model apart from the proposed factor model so that the readers could see the changes more clearly.

- In Figure 1, quite a number of items showed low factor loadings (< 0.5). Were they retained in the final model or not? And why?

- Model comparison should be done to compare the model fit of the 3-factor model to alternative 2-factor and 4-factor models.

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: ID: PONE-D-24-14873

Title: Parental Considerations About Their Childs’Mental Health: Validating the German Adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

Thank you for providing a chance to review this manuscript.

Detailed information:

Abstract

1) Please state the purpose of your research.

2) Abstracts require a brief summary of the article's background, aims, methods, results and conclusions. The current abstract does not provide a good overview, especially of the results. The results are meant to be narrated with statistically relevant data. It is suggested that subheadings could be added to the abstract to make the whole abstract clearer and easier to understand. Rewrite it with reference to high quality literature.

Method

Participants & Procedure

Line 116, Page 7: “All data used in this study (34) stems from the third measuring time point” What is the reason for choosing time point 3 instead of 1,2?

Line 112-127, Page 6-7: Please describe the underlying information such as the location of the survey.

Line 120, Page 7: 1) “The target population were mothers of children aged 0 to 3 years” Is this all the inclusion criteria? Are there exclusion criteria for the population, if so, please add them. 2) “which were recruited for the study by various social media channels, medical institutions and professionals, and professional support organizations.” It is recommended to list how many people have been recruited by each route, as there is still a big difference between the two methods of recruitment.

Line 121, Page 7: “ by various social media channels” Is it possible to give some examples of social media?

Line 123, Page 7: “missing data” What are the missing values? What is the reason why you don't use the missing value handling method but just delete it?

Line 122-127, Page 7: Has the sample size of 378 been done enough? How was the sample size calculated? What is the sample missingness rate? What was the sampling method for the population? Please specify the process of recruiting the sample.

Line 125, Page 7: “yrs” For the first occurrence in the text, do not use abbreviations; use the full name.

Line 126, Page 7: “(SD = 13.32, range = 10.2 - 78.6).” The previous article stated that mothers of children aged 0-3 were surveyed, is this age range too out of line?

Materials

Line 128, Page 7: One subtitle for each tool (Measure).

Line 135-136, Page 7: “Next to the PRFQ, the following variables and corresponding instruments were chosen to assess concurrent validity” All scales are part of the analysis and therefore all need to be described in detail, including basic information about the scale and the reliability of the translated version.

Line 145, Page 8: 1) It is recommended to align the numbers in the table so that it is more aesthetically pleasing. 2) Currencies are to be explained and should be written out in Notes like an acronym.

Analysis

Line 149-151, Page 9: This paragraph is not appropriate for this section.

Line 153-154, Page 9:1) all packages italicized with version number. 2) The exact date of acquisition should also be stated

Line 157-167, Page 9-10: “Next” The description can be done in segments here and the narrative is in the wrong order, it is a confidence test under a CFA determined model, please replace the order.

Line 171-172, Page 10: How much sample size for each of the two groups is something that needs to be stated in the article.

Line 188-189, Page 11: This paragraph would be more appropriately placed at the beginning.

There are some problems in this paper: 1) much of the content is not detailed enough; 2) there are some logical errors.

Thank you and my best,

Your reviewer

Reviewer #2: The paper assesses the structural and concurrent validity of the German version of PRFQ. It is well written. Few comments for the authors.

Title

It may be advisable to let the type of population included be reflected in the title. i.e. healthy children or not.

Keywords: Can you add validation to keywords?

Introduction

Write in full PRF in the sub-title "PRF and its Relevance".

Methods

i. Please expand on the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

ii. Apart from age, it will be better to give clinical characteristics of these children. Are they healthy children?

Other comments as indicated in the attached.

Reviewer #3: The present study investigates the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) and its adaptation for the German population. While the paper is interesting, it faces several issues regarding its statistical analysis. Here are my main comments:

- It is unclear how the authors accounted for the fact that the items are on a Likert scale, and therefore are not quantitative variables, in their Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) estimations. For example, the maximum likelihood estimation used in EFA typically assumes normality.

- How did the authors assess the skewness (as they mentioned) in ordinal variables?

- What correlation coefficient is presented in Table 2? How were the subscales determined? Was item parceling or factor scores used? It is important to note the issues that can arise with item parceling.

- Regarding the assessment of the instrument's concurrent validity: do the other instruments used in the study have good psychometric properties?

- What are the estimates shown in Figure 1? Where are the error variances? The unstandardized estimates, standard errors, standardized estimates for each path, and the variance of the error variables must be included.

- What criteria were used to exclude missing cases? Was any other data screening procedure adopted, such as assessing for careless responding?

- How was the translation of items into German validated?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-14873.pdf

PONE-D-24-14873R1Parental considerations about their childs’ mental health: validating the german adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning QuestionnairePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wildner,

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 revised work has been reviewed by the three original reviewers, who are mostly satisfied with the revision. Please amend the manuscript according to the remaining reviewer comments before we can make a final decision on acceptance.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 06 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,

Ted C.T. Fong, 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.

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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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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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 #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: 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: ID: PONE-D-24-14873R1

Title: Parental considerations about their childs’ mental health: validating the german

adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

Thank you for providing a chance to review this manuscript.

Detailed information:

Participants & Procedure

1) “which were recruited for the study by various means such as social media channels (i.e., X/Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts), medical institutions and professionals, and professional support organizations, with social media being the most useful tool.” Please indicate the number of persons recruited by each route.

The article has been very much revised, though there are still a handful of problems, and the author is asked to change it carefully.

Thank you and my best,

Your reviewer

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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.

Parental considerations about their childs’ mental health: validating the german adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

PONE-D-24-14873R2

Dear Dr. Wildner,

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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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,

Ted C.T. Fong, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

**********

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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

**********

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: ID: PONE-D-24-14873R2

Title: Parental considerations about their childs’ mental health: validating the german

adaptation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

Thank you for providing a chance to review this manuscript.

Recommendation: Accept.

After careful revision by the authors, the manuscript has met the criteria for publication, congratulations!

Thank you and my best,

Your reviewer

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

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