Dear Dr. Todorović,

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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?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Minor edits:

Lines 52-53: “University students, who are often in a period of transition and identity formation.”

[Add reference/source]

Lines 58-60: “Studies showed that individuals with higher levels of resilience were better equipped to cope with pandemic-related stressors and reported fewer mental health symptoms (7).”

[Only one reference/source, yet you mention “studies”, which I guess are multiple? Consider adding more sources, and even potentially developing slightly that insight.]

Lines 108-112: “The survey included questions on students' sociodemographic characteristics, their living and learning conditions during the lockdown, the perceived health threat of COVID-19 in their immediate environment, the impact of lockdown and related measures on their living and learning conditions, as well as self-administered questionnaires assessing their health status.”

[Perhaps not necessary here in the main body, but those included questions could eventually be made accessible to the reader via a link or a supplementary material file. Or perhaps you could add something like "available via corresponding author, on demand"]

Moderate edits:

Lines 41-42: “Psychological resilience is the capacity to adapt and recover from adversity, enabling individuals to maintain their psychological well-being in the face of stress and challenges.”

[Add reference/source that clearly states that. Also, it is not a wrong definition per se, but the “maintain psychological well-being” aspect is debatable… If you “recovered” from something, can it mean that you “maintained” well-being during the whole process without it being impacted at all at any point? I would advise going slightly deeper about resilience (either in the background through your readings for a more comprehensive understanding, or here in the introduction section by adding a few sentences)]

Lines 60-61: “This underscores the importance of resilience in helping individuals maintain stability during times of crisis.”

[Lack of explanation here. Why precisely resilience is of help to maintain stability? Which resilience factors help, or what aspect/skill/capacity helps facing such adversity?]

Lines 65-66: “This has led to the development of various resilience measurement tools, such as the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) (10). It is essential to assess whether these tools maintain consistent validity over time”

[Why is the BRS the only scale mentioned? How does it represent the shift toward a modern approach to resilience (as a dynamic and evolving process)? What are the other scales available, and what are their differences? Have you considered exploring some of the advantages and disadvantages between scales in order to justify the choice of the BRS? Are this choice and these details already addressed in another publication related to the PIMS2-SPE study? If so, it would be appropriate to reference it here. Here is a link leading to literature about several measurement tools]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=measuring+and+assessing+resilience&btnG=

Lines 94-95: “The measurement times used for this study were T0 and T1.”

[To me, more details on why those precise measurement times were chosen (T0 and T1) would seem important to display here.]

Lines 375-376: “The relatively short time frame between measurements also suggests that observed changes in resilience might reflect short-term adaptations, rather than long-term shifts in resilience.”

[Good point here. As mentioned above, it would be interesting to add explanation on why you chose such a short time frame between the two measurements.]

Major edits:

Lines 75-76: “no previous study has assessed the longitudinal measurement invariance of resilience scales, particularly in relation to the potential effects of response shift (12,13).”

[This to me seems a little hasty. More precision is needed here. Perhaps effects of response shift have not been explored previously, yet is it true for the invariance of resilience scales? Perhaps invariance in terms of effects of response shift has not been studied, but then a distinction needs to be worded here. A quick search with the right keywords made me doubt, or at least question, such lack of previous body of work you put forward here. Here is the link to literature exploring measurement invariance of resilience scales]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=gsb95&q=invariance%20resilience%20scale&lookup=0&hl=fr

Lines 80-81: “We hypothesized that the BRS, when used across multiple time points, would maintain its psychometric properties, enabling valid comparisons of resilience over time.”

[Why such a hypothesis? On what elements and/or theoretical and empirical insights do you base your hypothesis on?]

Recap for the whole introduction section:

[I have not checked the author guidelines; therefore, I don't know if you would have room and could be allowed for a lengthier introduction... Yet if so, I would globally consider adding more depth to this whole introduction section...

- What are the different tools/scales for measuring resilience?

- Or at least, what are some of the more robust and well-established ones?

- What are their advantages/disadvantages, or what are some of their differences?

- What are the ones/the one that align the best with modern approaches considering resilience as a dynamic process?

- Why choosing the BRS?]

Lines 323-324: “This aligns with earlier studies on resilience measurement, which suggest that while resilience is a dynamic process that can evolve over time, it is also stable enough to be measured consistently across time points (10).”

[This needs to be more developed and discussed. Earlier studies on resilience measurement have not been mentioned (nor reflected upon) enough throughout the paper (introduction, and here in the discussion). I would advise to at least give some insights here on the results and implications from those earlier studies in order then to compare them to your own results and in order to offer a more comprehensive and complete discussion. Also there needs to be more clarity on the fact resilience is said to be a dynamic process while being stable enough to be measured across time points. To me your assertion here seems too hasty and needs to be developed and explored.]

Recap for the whole discussion section:

[This discussion section could point to some missing elements/aspects in your introduction (elements that perhaps you'll add in the intro so that you'll be able to link them to your discussion here). More globally, it could be interesting to explore some of the following questioning:

- Do all resilience scales encapsulate the dynamic nature of resilience?

- How does the BRS position itself in this regard?

- What dimensions/factors of the BRS and of other well-known scales (in those earlier studies maybe) account for the dynamism of the resilience construct?

- At the same time, how come those dimensions/factors/items account for some sort of stability in the results across time points?]

GENERAL AND/OR ADDITIONAL COMMENT:

[I sure understand you are not writing a theoretical paper about resilience, neither that you aim at discussing conceptual boundaries of such a construct and the tools developed to measure it, so no worries here. You do not need to rethink the whole approach behind your study. My point is that, to me, a more comprehensive reflection and a deeper discussion need to be displayed in your paper about these aspects (results from earlier studies; comparison with your results; dynamism of resilience while scales lead to stable results; resilience dimensions targeted within those measuring tools; and how all of these insights are to be interpreted altogether...)]

Reviewer #2: The ethical standards of the study were respected (according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki).

The study framework, the composition of the study population sample, and the data collection and processing were carried out rigorously and clearly explained within the article.

The bibliographic references are robust.

The results were thoroughly analyzed, and the data interpretation was performed accurately and cautiously.

In conclusion, this article demonstrates sound scientific quality and is suitable for publication as is.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Resilience Across Time: Longitudinal Measurement Invariance of the Brief Resilience Scale in French University Students.

PONE-D-25-29756R1

Dear Dr. Todorović,

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.

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Frantisek Sudzina

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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

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??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: I would like to congratulate the authors on their work and on their efforts to address all the points and needed edits raised earlier in the review process. They added clarity, depth and made the manuscript more robust overall (in particular the introduction and discussion sections, as their method and data analysis were already sound). Thank you also for taking the time to clearly reply to each of my comments by explaining how you addressed each of them. I now recommend this work for publication.

Best regards,

Reviewer #1

Reviewer #2: The authors of the article responded with great clarity and attention to the requests for clarification they received after the initial review. The article, thus revised, is, in my opinion, entirely suitable for publication.

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what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.). 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 For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .-->

Reviewer #1: Yes: Clément MétaisClément Métais

Reviewer #2: No

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