PONE-D-26-20428

The Well-Being of Jewish College Students in the United States

PLOS One

Dear Dr. Miller,

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.

The reviewers have identified a series of areas meriting improvement, primarily in terms of the paper's empirical design and discussion.

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Academic Editor

PLOS One

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Additional Editor Comments :

The reviewers have now reverted to me with their comments. Overall, they see merit in your paper, yet identify a series of issues warranting attention, primarily in terms of the empirical design and discussion of results. Admittedly, both reviewers have offered very detailed comments, and I strongly suggest you heed them while revising your paper.

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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: Partly

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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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. Please see comments below delineated by section and line number.

Abstract

Line 31 “To fill these gaps in knowledge.” remove period which appears mid sentence.

Lines 31-32 Unclear how student well-being one year later (January-June 2025) exactly relates to student well-being a year earlier when Israel-Hamas protests/conflict-related incidents were at their peak (Spring 2024). Geopolitical events and climate shift rapidly- a year later, the climate may not be ideal for measuring how students experienced the aforementioned events. There needs to be a bit more rationale here as to the time lag. Anti-semitism is ongoing- but the authors mention the events of October 7 and clearly highlight spring 2024. Yet the data timeline does not align with that.

Line 35 Second aim is lengthy/reads unwieldy. Perhaps streamline to support the readability.

-Specific survey content including tools used not specified in Abstract, limiting the reader’s understanding of the scope of data collection. This can be added in succinctly/briefly for clarification.

Introduction

Lines 64-65 “ Nearly one-third” - report or reported? The rest of this paragraph is past tense.

Lines 67-70 Sentence structure does not make sense. Please check.

Lines 73-74 Needs its’ own citations - UCLA task force is not (alone) ‘policymakers and politicians’ as stated.

Lines 79-83 It would be helpful to foreshadow some of the mentioned ‘range of protective factors’ as these are relevant later on in the paper.

Lines 84-94 This paragraph is clear and timely- however racially minoritized youth is not mentioned previously- and this bears mention since Jewish students are a sub-group of this- and previous research does exist within other racially minoritized student groups- relevant to this study.

Methods and Materials

Lines 135-149 Please clarify- were these questions asked only of Jewish students? Were there other questions asked of the 3 other categories of students but not of Jewish students? In other words were campus atmosphere / belonging questions asked of all students or only Jewish? This is not clear in the current reading.

Line 151-159 Health Minds Study requires citation

Line 175 (179) How was neuroticism assessed? You mention a 3 item scale, but the flow of this section is disjointed. I suggest a clear flow where the entire survey content, who receive which questions etc. is included, rather than a narrative which seems to switch back and forth between survey content and data analysis. (You may include this in a chart/table for clarity.)

Strong suggestion: No positionality statements are included. Given the subject matter of this manuscript, strongly suggest to include. Topics such as Jewish identity, belonging, campus climate and Israel-Hamas conflict are politically and emotionally charged. Why are the authors uniquely qualified to study this, not only from a professional perspective but also from a personal one? If not uniquely qualified, please provide some context as to background/potential bias. This information provides context.

Results

Line 270 “Those who are Jewish” rather state “Those who identified as Jewish”

Discussion

Lines 334-336 This is an important point and requires more previous literature to situate this finding. (I stated this point as well in the Introduction comments.) In general, while little research may exist, there has been, since October 7, a growing body of research on this topic which unfortunately was not included here. The paper reads as a standalone island with very little history, when in fact, there are studies that pre-date this one on similar topics. Strong suggestion- include all relevant studies in the Introduction and again in the Discussion to better situate results within the literature.

Structure- Discussion reads as a series of mini-points, rather than paragraphs. If this aligns with the conventions of the journal, then it does not need revision. However, most papers include paragraphs with 4-8 sentences each, allowing a smoother flow for the reader.

Ex. Lines 342-346 paragraph reads as a limitation (that section is missing here too). It does not flow from the previous one or into the subsequent one.

Lines 347-351 suggestion to put this into a formal “Conclusions” section. It reads that way.

Lines 352-358 belongs earlier in the discussion chater.

Lines 359-365 Can be toward the end of Discussion or in ‘Future Research/Implications for Research’ section

Lines 366-372 Another limitations point. Why in its’ own paragraph and not a formal limitations section?

Lines 373-381, 382-383 see comment on 366-372.

Suggestion: Discussion needs to be situated in more literature (and add this to introduction as well). Also, can split up with/with out subheadings into Discussion, Limitations, Implications, Conclusion. Also, please organize the content to flow with longer, more coherent paragraphs.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for this interesting and timely study examining Jewish student well-being in the post-October 7th campus climate. The topic is important and the data have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the literature. However, I have identified several methodological and framing concerns that I believe must be addressed to strengthen the paper for publication.

Preregistration

The preregistration was not available on OSF—only the survey was uploaded. Please make the preregistration publicly available so that adherence to the preregistered analytic plan can be evaluated.

Introduction

The introduction would benefit from a brief description of the events of October 7th (i.e., the terrorist attack and ensuing war) to contextualize the study for readers unfamiliar with the timeline. Consider noting that upticks in antisemitism are often reported globally following Israeli military action, as this provides important historical context. Relatedly, the statement "encampments that centered Zionism and the Israeli government" is vague and could be elaborated to more fully capture the nuance of the encampment formation.

The introduction should also discuss how the US government response differed from that of other countries—where protests and encampments were largely permitted to continue—making the US a unique case study.

The study's framing would benefit from significant revision to reflect the timeline of data collection with reference to sociopolitical events. Your data capture Jewish student well-being after substantial governmental and institutional attention had been given to the upsurge in antisemitism on college campuses. As such, the paper cannot be characterized as an examination of heightened antisemitism on college campuses without the important contextual detail that institutions had, often as a result of direct or indirect action from the government, implemented policies or procedures in an attempt to address Jewish students' civil rights. This temporal and policy context may explain why findings diverge from other studies conducted during this period and should be foregrounded throughout.

Please include specific hypotheses in the introduction, including hypotheses for the HMS data, whose inclusion is otherwise unclear.

Methods: Measures & Survey Design

Judaism is framed as a religious identity, which is a notable limitation. Most recent studies (e.g., your reference #26) avoid this framing. Many Jews identify as atheist or agnostic, and this group may be particularly affected by campus climate through lower levels of connection to the Jewish community via institutionalized religious practice. Please make explicit throughout the paper that you are assessing Judaism in the religious sense and not as an ethnicity, and discuss how this framing may have impacted your data and results.

Most demographic items appear to have included an open-ended response option in the survey uploaded to OSF. Was this also the case for religion? If not, please explain the rationale. If so, elaborate on how "other" responses were coded.

For the race/ethnicity item, did any respondents identify as Jewish (or Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi)? If so, how were these responses handled? This relates directly to the concern about respondents who identify as ethnically but not religiously Jewish.

Please clarify how gender was coded. The paper states that "female" was used as the reference category, but the survey uses the term "woman" and includes six other gender categories. Collapsing men with all other categories makes little theoretical sense. Please explain and justify the coding scheme.

Please describe how religious identity is assessed in the HMS study, and how HMS demographic covariates were assessed and may differ from those in the present study.

Please elaborate on how the scale to capture campus atmosphere was created and how items were selected.

There appears to be an error in the scale items listed at lines 144–147. I believe the first item should be "In order to fit in on my campus, I feel the need to hide that I am Jewish," with the remaining items following accordingly. Please verify and correct.

Please include how neuroticism was assessed in the methods section.

Cronbach's "a" should be "α" throughout.

Line 172: "ethnic identify" should be "ethnic identity."

Methods: Analytic Approach

Please elaborate on why GEEs were used rather than multilevel modelling. I would suggest that fitting a multilevel model with students nested within institutions (or a three-level model: students within institutions within states if sample sizes permit) would be more informative. It would also be helpful to report intraclass correlation coefficients for target constructs.

Related to my comment above, the primary models reported should, by default, adequately account for the nested structure of the data. Please report these in the main text or provide justification for why adjustment is unnecessary (e.g., low ICCs).

I found the dummy coding scheme unclear and believe this section could benefit from greater elaboration and explanation. For example, "reference" typically denotes the group coded as 0, but "referent" here appears to denote the included rather than omitted group. Additionally, the reference/base category for field of study is not specified. Please clarify.

Please elaborate on how missing data were handled.

In the notes for Table 3, it appears that race and ethnicity were both included as covariates in the HMS analyses, but in the present study this was assessed as a single construct. Please address this discrepancy.

Results & Interpretation

Avoid starting sentences with a numeral.

Please be consistent in using either "%" or "percent" throughout.

The claim that "these findings underscore an important point: identity-based stressors…do not have an automatic or inevitable relationship with well-being" is not substantiated by the data. The analyses are cross-sectional, and null findings cannot prove the absence of an effect (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). Please revise.

The paragraph at lines 323–328 is written as though a within-person investigation was conducted.

Discussion

You mention the buffering effect of social connection/support, and it appears this could be tested with your data. Including a supplementary analysis with an interaction term to test this buffering effect would strengthen the paper.

Please make explicit in the discussion that results cannot be generalized beyond the US given the idiosyncratic nature of the US administration's response. Related to my comments regarding the introduction, the study could just as easily be framed as an examination of the efficacy of US administration attempts to combat antisemitism on college campuses. This contextual detail could be seen as both a strength and a limitation of your examination and should be central to how the results are interpreted.

Related to my above comment, the statement "We hope that our findings are not misinterpreted to suggest that universities have no reason to invest in efforts to safeguard Jewish students' civil rights" should be followed by an acknowledgment that by the time your study was fielded, such intervention efforts had already taken place. Your study could just as easily be framed as an indication of the success of these efforts. Please include discussion of this.

The paragraph beginning on line 373 includes several assertions that would benefit from citations. If this is speculation, please make this explicit. For example, it is just as reasonable to suspect that those with little connection to Jewish identity may be more distressed due to feelings of alienation.

Greater elaboration on the purpose of including the HMS data in your study would significantly strengthen the paper. Related to my comment about including specific hypotheses in the introduction, discussing how/if you expected results from your data to diverge from the HMS estimates would go a long way to address this.

Limitations

The limitations section would benefit from significant expansion to address measurement limitations (particularly the religious framing of Jewish identity) and limited generalizability. Please also cite work conducted in the immediate aftermath of October 7th which does find that Jewish student well-being deteriorated in that period, when discussing how and why your findings might diverge.

You mention that your sample was not representative of the broader population of Jewish students in terms of political diversity, but this variable was not assessed. The statement is therefore unfounded, though the omission of this variable is a significant limitation that warrants greater elaboration.

Conclusion

Please include a concluding paragraph.

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what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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The Well-Being of Jewish College Students in the United States

PONE-D-26-20428R1

Dear Dr. Miller,

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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Kind regards,

Vasileios Kallinterakis

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. 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: The authors are commended for a much improved and clear manuscript. My only comment would be that my preference is a Discussion section that includes subheadings (this one was continuous, without subheadings). I anticipate that this study will make a significant contribution to the literature, and have an impact on how university-student mental health/wellbeing is understood.

Reviewer #2: The authors have adequately addressed my comments on their prior draft. I look forward to seeing the manuscript published.

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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: Zahava L. Friedman

Reviewer #2: No

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