Perceived Social Support, Coping Strategies and Psychological Distress among University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploration Study for Social Sustainability in Sabah, Malaysia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
It is a really well designed manuscript
Abstract can be revised, it can include more methodology and results.
Author Response
Social Sustainability among university student especially how student deal with psychological distress are important elements during COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the relationship between perceived social support and coping strategies with the psychological distress of depression, anxiety, and stress among the students of Public University in Sabah during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to determine the level of depression, anxiety, and stress among the students. The total respondents were 385 students of this university that ranged from 20 to 23 years of age and were collected from all the faculties available at the main campus of Public University in Sabah, Kota Kinabalu. The research method applied was using the quantitative method, which collects the data through an online questionnaire platform. The result of the descriptive analysis indicated that both the levels of depression and anxiety of the Public University in Sabah students were mild. In contrast, the stress level was moderate during the pandemic. The results of the inferential analysis indicated the relationship between perceived social support and psychological distress, which focused on depression, anxiety and stress among the university students, to overall had a significantly negative correlation between its subscales (r = between - .148 and -.359; p < .05). Based on the findings, it is translucent how vulnerable university students are to psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it can be overcome through social support and suitable types of coping strategies. Besides, a negative link between depression and problem-focused coping was reported (r = -.274, p < .05). These findings also contribute to social sustainability and wellbeing of students in public university in Sabah, Malaysia.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please provide a discussion regarding the ethical conduct of the study. Was the study approved by a local ethics board? Was there any personal interest? Was there any conflict of interest? Was confidentiality assured? Was informed consent taken? Considering respondents might provide high scores for depression and anxiety, what were the steps taken by the researchers for this?
2.2 Research Respondents: Describe the method used to carry out simple random sampling. Which list of students did the researchers worked from? Give a flowchart describing the breakdown of samples (ie dropouts, incomplete forms) to arrive at the final sample.
2.3 Research Location: Why was only the Kota Kinabalu branch sampled? Why were the other branches not sampled as well?
2.4 Research Instruments:
Cite the copyright owners of the instruments. In what language were the instruments administered? If other than English, cite the validation study. State the psychometric properties of the instruments to ensure they are adequate. What do you mean by 'the questionnaire was designed to refer to'? The psychometric properties will change if the questionnaires were modified.
2.5 Research Procedure
Repetitive without adding new information. Describe the SPSS version used and licensed to whom.
2.6 Was the data normally distributed? Describe the tests that were used. Parametric tests are only used for normally distributed data. Give the standard deviations for the mean values.
Reliability analyses of the instruments is not relevant to this study. This is not a validation study of the instruments.
3.2 Why markedly less males responded? Why only 19 students responded in the youngest age? Also very few responded from certain faculties and from the senior years. Give reasons why. Would purposive sampling been more useful?
For the DASS questionnaire, only give values for the total scores, not for the individual items. The questionnaire works as a whole, not per individual items. Give p values and odd ratios.
Yes please analyse for differences in terms of gender and age for all the questionnaires.
4. Discussion: you cannot assume the caring levels of the university mitigated the anxiety and the depression levels without doing some measure. Saying that your university did a great job is self congratulatory. It is better to do some appraisal of what was mitigating and what were potential problems faced by the students. For example, the students may have faced financial compromise, poor access to devices and wifi connectivity. Not to mention vulnerability to bullying from colleagues and abuse from family members. Also an added stressor is when lecturers cross boundaries and give sessions outside the work hours, such as at night and during family time at weekends.
Describe the counselling service offered. How many counselors to how many students available and how are they reached? Any students referred on to mental health services?
Discuss why the social support could be negatively correlated. Perhaps a contribution from negative communication from the social support.
With regards to avoidant coping, describe the levels of self harm and substance use in your campus.
Give recommendations on how counselling services and support from the university can be improved further.
Conclusion needs to be shortened. Limitations are placed in the discussion part.
Author Response
Reviewer 2
Please provide a discussion regarding the ethical conduct of the study. Was the study approved by a local ethics board?
Refer to line 472: Ethical Body Universiti Malaysia Sabah 5KEtika 5/20(11)
The questionnaire has been evaluated by the ethical board of ums before the distribution.
Was there any personal interest? Was there any conflict of interest? Was confidentiality assured?
Refer to line 476: No conflict of interest & confidentiality
Was informed consent taken?
Refer to line 473: Yes. All the respondents had given their consent before participating the survey.
Considering respondents might provide high scores for depression and anxiety, what were the steps taken by the researchers for this?
Referral to a psychiatry or counsellor
2.2 Research Respondents: Describe the method used to carry out simple random sampling. Which list of students did the researchers worked from? Give a flowchart describing the breakdown of samples (ie dropouts, incomplete forms) to arrive at the final sample.
The data collection adopted a basis of voluntarism for participation. The dropouts and incomplete forms are not recorded in the researcher’s database because the participants have no submission entry to the database. The flowchart of data collection had discussed at the section of “Research Procedure”
2.3 Research Location: Why was only the Kota Kinabalu branch sampled? Why were the other branches not sampled as well?
Ease data collection because the researcher has no access to the population at the other branches.
2.4 Research Instruments:
Cite the copyright owners of the instruments. In what language were the instruments administered? If other than English, cite the validation study. State the psychometric properties of the instruments to ensure they are adequate. What do you mean by 'the questionnaire was designed to refer to'? The psychometric properties will change if the questionnaires were modified.
Amended at the Section “research instrument”
- English language was used as the medium
- “Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) by Lovibond and Lovibond…”
- “Brief COPE Scale (Brief COPE) by Carver….”
- “Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) by Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, and Farley…”
- Added internal consistency of the instruments
- Extracted 'the questionnaire was designed to refer to'
2.5 Research Procedure
Repetitive without adding new information. Describe the SPSS version used and licensed to whom.
The “research procedure” has been re-write. Added “26th version of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences licensed to University Malaysia Sabah” at the section of “Research Procedure” line 174.
2.6 Was the data normally distributed? Describe the tests that were used. Parametric tests are only used for normally distributed data. Give the standard deviations for the mean values.
Addressed the normality of data and parametric test conducted at the section of “Research Procedure” line 177. Added Standard deviation at the section of “Results” line 190.
Reliability analyses of the instruments is not relevant to this study. This is not a validation study of the instruments.
The results of reliability analysis had re-ordered at the section of “research instrument” line 137, 158, and 166
3.2 Why markedly less males responded? Why only 19 students responded in the youngest age? Also very few responded from certain faculties and from the senior years. Give reasons why. Would purposive sampling been more useful?
The survey form was distributed online and it is a challenge to collect response from the research population because the survey would be ignored by most people.
For the DASS questionnaire, only give values for the total scores, not for the individual items. The questionnaire works as a whole, not per individual items. Give p values and odd ratios.
Amended at the section of “Results”
Yes please analyse for differences in terms of gender and age for all the questionnaires.
Not applicable because not the research objective
- Discussion: you cannot assume the caring levels of the university mitigated the anxiety and the depression levels without doing some measure. Saying that your university did a great job is self congratulatory. It is better to do some appraisal of what was mitigating and what were potential problems faced by the students. For example, the students may have faced financial compromise, poor access to devices and wifi connectivity. Not to mention vulnerability to bullying from colleagues and abuse from family members. Also an added stressor is when lecturers cross boundaries and give sessions outside the work hours, such as at night and during family time at weekends.
Addressed at the section of “Limitation and Recommendations” line 413
Describe the counselling service offered. How many counselors to how many students available and how are they reached? Any students referred on to mental health services?
Described at the section of “Discussion” line 238.
Discuss why the social support could be negatively correlated. Perhaps a contribution from negative communication from the social support.
With regards to avoidant coping, describe the levels of self harm and substance use in your campus.
Not relevant
Give recommendations on how counselling services and support from the university can be improved further.
Monitor student’s mental health (depression, stress, & anxiety)
Online counseling
Recreational Park for leisure
Conclusion needs to be shortened. Limitations are placed in the discussion part.
Amended the “conclusion” and reordered the “limitation of study” to the “discussion” section
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for sending the manuscript for review. The topic, methods and sample size are acceptable by and large. Although the manuscript needs major revisions to be acceptable for publication. My comments are listed below:
- Name of the country should be mentioned in the title.
- Methods, particularly used questionnaires and inclusion criteria, should be explained in details in the abstract.
- Last key-word was not selected from MESH and should be replaced.
- Any abbreviation like 'MCO' should be used in full-term for first time.
- The number in the parentheses is misleading in this sentence: ‘The results are constant, where 71% of the students (138) indicated increased stress and anxiety due to the Covid-19 outbreak.’
- The introduction should be summarized substantially. In addition, sub-sections are not appropriate for this integrated section.
- ‘2.1. Research Design’ should be extremely summarized because it contains some extract sentences.
- Language of the survey as well as psychometric properties of the scales in the used language should be added.
- ‘2.6.1. Descriptive Analysis’ is not helpful.
- Some sentences like first paragraph of the results are not appropriate for a scientific paper due to explanation of very clear facts that are described in books.
- Table-5 should be reordered in the descending manner other than for age and year of study.
- ‘Above’ should be removed from this sentence and other similar examples: ‘Table 6 above showed the distribution of the respondents’.
- Mentioning hypotheses is not necessary in the results.
- Text of the results should be extremely summarized and repetition of the data that are reported in the tables should be avoided.
- P-value=0 should be replaced with more exact value.
- Conclusion is not acceptable at all. Any explanation about methods and hypotheses and introduction should be removed and importance of the main findings should be mentioned as one or two paragraph(s). Limitations and suggestions for future studies should be mentioned as separated sections.
Author Response
Reviewer comment 3
Thank you for sending the manuscript for review. The topic, methods and sample size are acceptable by and large. Although the manuscript needs major revisions to be acceptable for publication. My comments are listed below:
- Name of the country should be mentioned in the title.
Added on the article title
- Methods, particularly used questionnaires and inclusion criteria, should be explained in details in the abstract.
Added under the section of “Materials and Methods”
- Last key-word was not selected from MESH and should be replaced.
Amended at the section of “Abstract”
- Any abbreviation like 'MCO' should be used in full-term for first time.
Excluded at the section of “Introduction”
- The number in the parentheses is misleading in this sentence: ‘The results are constant, where 71% of the students (138) indicated increased stress and anxiety due to the Covid-19 outbreak.’
Amended at the section of “Introduction” line 54
- The introduction should be summarized substantially. In addition, sub-sections are not appropriate for this integrated section.
Reorganized at the section of “Introduction”
- ‘2.1. Research Design’ should be extremely summarized because it contains some extract sentences.
Amended at the section of “Materials and Methods” line 97
- Language of the survey as well as psychometric properties of the scales in the used language should be added.
Amended at the Section “research instrument” line 126 - 168
- English language was used as the medium
- Added internal consistency of the instruments
- Extracted 'the questionnaire was designed to refer to'
- ‘2.6.1. Descriptive Analysis’ is not helpful.
Excluded from the article
- Some sentences like first paragraph of the results are not appropriate for a scientific paper due to explanation of very clear facts that are described in books.
Amended at the section of “Results” line 184
- Table-5 should be reordered in the descending manner other than for age and year of study.
Reorganized at the section of “Results”
- ‘Above’ should be removed from this sentence and other similar examples: ‘Table 6 above showed the distribution of the respondents’.
Removed the word “above” from the text at section of “Results”
- Mentioning hypotheses is not necessary in the results.
Removed hypothesis at the section of “Results”
- Text of the results should be extremely summarized and repetition of the data that are reported in the tables should be avoided.
Text of the results have been summarized
- P-value=0 should be replaced with more exact value.
Amended at the section of “Results”
- Conclusion is not acceptable at all. Any explanation about methods and hypotheses and introduction should be removed and importance of the main findings should be mentioned as one or two paragraph(s). Limitations and suggestions for future studies should be mentioned as separated sections.
The conclusion has been re-written.
Limitations and suggestions for future studies have reordered into the discussion section.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Volunteerism is not simple random sampling.
Too many tables. Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5 can be combined.
review this paper:
Depression, anxiety, and the COVID-19 pandemic: Severity of symptoms and associated factors among university students after the end of the movement lockdown
Analysing in terms of age, gender, marital status for all the questionnaires is fundamentally relevant to the objectives. Otherwise there is not enough 'meat' for discussion.
Please correct the odd ways of citing references in the text.
Author Response
Volunteerism is not simple random sampling.
Amended
Too many tables. Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5 can be combined.
Amended at the section of “Results” line 218
review this paper:
Depression, anxiety, and the COVID-19 pandemic: Severity of symptoms and associated factors among university students after the end of the movement lockdown
- Luke Sy-Cherng Woon ,
- Mohammad Farris Iman Leong Bin Abdullah ,
- Hatta Sidi ,
- Nor Shuhada Mansor ,
- Nik Ruzyanei Nik Jaafar
- Published: May 27, 2021
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252481
Reviewed
Analysing in terms of age, gender, marital status for all the questionnaires is fundamentally relevant to the objectives. Otherwise there is not enough 'meat' for discussion.
Added at the section of “Results” line212
- Stress Female > male – significant difference because perceived stress more easily than male
- No significant for gender in term of depression & anxiety
- All demographical variables do not show difference for age, faculty, race, year of study, and religion
- Marital status is not discussed because they are all single
Please correct the odd ways of citing references in the text.
Amended through the paper.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been improved substantially and almost all of my comments have been addressed appropriately. Only two comments should be considered:
- 'Malaysia' should be mentioned in the title.
- I should repeat comment 2 because I didn`t find appropriate revisions in the abstract. Methods, particularly used questionnaires and inclusion criteria, should be explained in details in the abstract.
Author Response
The manuscript has been improved substantially and almost all of my comments have been addressed appropriately. Only two comments should be considered:
- 'Malaysia' should be mentioned in the title.
Added at the title
- I should repeat comment 2 because I didn`t find appropriate revisions in the abstract. Methods, particularly used questionnaires and inclusion criteria, should be explained in details in the abstract.
Added at the abstract
The inclusion criteria of study respondent include: 1) currently an active status university student; 2) absent of visual disability; 3) absent of network coverage issues and; 4) absent of clinical symptoms of psychological distress.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
State the questionnaires used in the abstract.
State the number of students at the Kinabalu branch.
Analyse the depression, anxiety and stress scores in relation to the demographic factors.
Carry out multiple logistic regression for significant demographic and coping factors for the depression, anxiety and stress scores.
Author Response
State the questionnaires used in the abstract.
Amended at the “Abstract”
State the number of students at the Kinabalu branch.
Total of student is 10,000
Amended at the section of “Research location” line 146
Analyse the depression, anxiety and stress scores in relation to the demographic factors.
Amended at the section of “Results” line 214 which focuses on the differences of the variables.
Added at the section of “Results” line 212
- No significant for gender in term of depression & anxiety
- All demographical variables do not show difference for age, faculty, race, year of study, and religion
- Marital status is not discussed because they are all single
Carry out multiple logistic regression for significant demographic and coping factors for the depression, anxiety and stress scores.
Added at the section of “Results” line 244
- The is no significant effect of gender on stress run by binary logistic regression
- The other demographic factor (eg. age, race…) reported absent of significant effect
…coping factors for the depression, anxiety and stress scores
Amended at the section of “limitation and recommendation” line 451
- Multiple regression for coping strategies on the depression, anxiety and stress scores are suggested for future research because of the study limitation, whereby this study is more focused on relationship within variables.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 4
Reviewer 2 Report
Please correct the grammar. For example, line 50 'The study of Son et al' to 'Son et al reported'. When your paper is accepted, learn from the typesetters to see how they rearrange the language of your paper.
You will also have to find references for the copyright of Google Form and the SPSS.
Line 205, ANOVA, not ANVOA.
Line 273, "might be due to the university themselves truly caring about
their students'’ situation and welfare. Change this statement to 'might be due to the university's efforts to look after its students situation and welfare'.
Line 405, do not use emotional terms in scientific papers like terrible. Just use poor.
I hope you have learnt how these reviews have made your paper more sophisticated and publishable. In future do carry out your studies with rigour so that your papers are more worthwhile to be read. Without scientific rigour and significant language editing, reviewers from the Europe and the US can easily reject your paper without further consideration.
Author Response
Please correct the grammar. For example, line 50 'The study of Son et al' to 'Son et al reported'. When your paper is accepted, learn from the typesetters to see how they rearrange the language of your paper.
Amended at line 50
You will also have to find references for the copyright of Google Form and the SPSS.
Mentioned at Line 485,
- SPSS licensing version 26th under Universiti Malaysia Sabah
- Copyright of Google Form under Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Reference to Ethical Body Universiti Malaysia Sabah 5KEtika 5/20(11)
Line 205, ANOVA, not ANVOA.
Amended at line 205
Line 273, "might be due to the university themselves truly caring about
their students'’ situation and welfare. Change this statement to 'might be due to the university's efforts to look after its students situation and welfare'.
Amended at line 266
Line 405, do not use emotional terms in scientific papers like terrible. Just use poor.
Amended at line 416
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
