Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 16, 2024
Decision Letter - Angelina Wilson Fadiji, Editor

PONE-D-24-28213Mental well-being in Swedish adolescents 2014-2023: a repeated population-based cross-sectional study focusing on temporal variations and differences between groupsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Uvhagen,

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Kind regards,

Angelina Wilson Fadiji, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Lena

Your manuscript has now been reviewed and we will like to invite you to make the following revisions to your manuscript.

This study is interesting as it has a focus on mental well-being in adolescents, considering both differences over time and between groups. Overall, the manuscript is well structured with alignment between different parts of the content. I have, however, some questions and comments mainly regarding the method section.

The title is informative and aligned with aim and research questions. The abstract coherently corresponds to the content in the manuscript. The introduction gives a review of previous research and describes both the knowledge gap and rationale for this study.

In materials and methods, it would be of interest for the reader with justifications for choice of design and choice of statistical analyses (normal distributed data?). A description of the demographics in Västmanland County is of value also for the discussion of generalization of the findings. Further, a description of the reliability and validity of the measures mental well-being and self-reported socioeconomic status is useful to have in the section of material and methods instead of mentioning it in the discussion.

In the result section is missing data described, how was it treated?

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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: 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: This study is interesting as it has a focus on mental well-being in adolescents, considering both differences over time and between groups. Overall, the manuscript is well structured with alignment between different parts of the content. I have, however, some questions and comments mainly regarding the method section.

The title is informative and aligned with aim and research questions. The abstract coherently corresponds to the content in the manuscript. The introduction gives a review of previous research and describes both the knowledge gap and rationale for this study.

In materials and methods, it would be of interest for the reader with justifications for choice of design and choice of statistical analyses (normal distributed data?). A description of the demographics in Västmanland County is of value also for the discussion of generalization of the findings. Further, a description of the reliability and validity of the measures mental well-being and self-reported socioeconomic status is useful to have in the section of material and methods instead of mentioning it in the discussion.

In the result section is missing data described, how was it treated?

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Lene Lindberg

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Revision 1

Dear Editor and reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing the manuscript Mental well-being in Swedish adolescents 2014-2023: a repeated population-based cross-sectional study focusing on temporal variations and differences between groups, and for considering it for publication in PLOS ONE. Below, we have responded to each point raised by editor and reviewer as follows:

1. The manuscript has been revised to ensure that it meets PLOS ONE´s style requirements.

2. Clarifications regarding the participant consent have been made in the Materials and methods section in the manuscript and in the online submission information. The clarifications mainly concern the information that the participants received before the study.

3a. The Data Availability Statement have been updated and clarified according to point 3a. The clarifications states that data can be shared upon request to corresponding author or a non-author contact person, that public sharing is not possible due to ethical and legal restrictions concerning the student's consent and data ownership, and that the data is owned by a third party who has restrictions.

4. Please see point 3a above.

5. The reference list has been revised to ensure that it is complete and correct. This includes the adding of one reference (#34) as a result of the new paragraph on demographics raised by reviewer, see below.

Additional editor and reviewer comments:

a) Regarding study design, we have clarified the choice of study design to fulfil the overall aim in the first paragraph in the Study design, population and data collection section. The headline has been changed to better match the content of the section.

Regarding choice of statistical analyses, the reasons for choosing Reverse Helmert’s contrast is clarified.

We have also added some information on the assumption underlying the reliability of the performed regression analysis.

In addition to these clarifications, we consider the section Statistical analysis to include a relatively detailed description of each step of the analysis and how it relates to each research questions and hence why it is justified.

b) Demographics of Västmanland county has been added in the Study design, population and data collection section in the manuscript. In the headline of this section, “participants” has been replaced with “population” to include the context.

Additionally, the generalisability of the findings has also been commented on in the Discussion section.

c) Description of validity and reliability of the measures of Mental well-being and Self-reported socioeconomic status has been elaborated and moved from the Discussion to the Material and methods section.

d) The handling of missing data has been described in the Results section.

We hope that these revisions are sufficient and fulfil your expectations. In addition to these revisions raised by editor and reviewer, we also made some copyediting changes after receiving go-ahead from editor via e-mail 24/01/2025. These changes does not include factual changes, only language editing, and have been made mainly in the discussion but also the last paragraph of the abstract, the conclusions and one paragraph in the introduction. To increase readability of the manuscript, these changes are not made with track changes.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers 250202.docx
Decision Letter - Angelina Wilson Fadiji, Editor

Mental well-being in Swedish adolescents 2014-2023: a repeated population-based cross-sectional study focusing on temporal variations and differences between groups

PONE-D-24-28213R1

Dear Lena,

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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Kind regards,

Angelina Wilson Fadiji, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Angelina Wilson Fadiji, Editor

PONE-D-24-28213R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Uvhagen,

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

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

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PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Angelina Wilson Fadiji

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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