Adversity Quotient Influences Self-Regulated Learning Strategies via Achievement Motivation Among Chinese University Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript ID: education-3700191
Review date: June 11, 2025

Dear authors:
Thank you very much for submitting the manuscript entitled ‘Students' adversity quotient
influences self-regulated learning strategies via achievement motivation’ (ID education-
3700191) to our journal.

After careful consideration, we believe that the paper addresses
a topic of great interest and can provide valuable insight into the relationship between
adversity quotient, achievement motivation, and self-regulated learning. However, before
it can be accepted, it needs substantial revision to fully comply with the journal's editorial
and ethical standards. Below you will find a detailed guide to aspects that should be
retained and improvements that should be made. The purpose is to provide you with
clear and sufficiently comprehensive guidance so that you can revise it effectively.
Current strengths: The study presents a relevant and timely research problem for
educational psychology. The overall structure follows the Introduction-Method-Results-
Discussion format, which facilitates understanding. Most dimensions of the scale used
show adequate reliability and internal validity indices, and the discussion hints at
promising practical applications for university intervention.
Points requiring priority attention
1) It would be helpful to include essential information about the design, sample, and main
findings in the abstract so that the reader can immediately understand the scope of the
work.
2) The introduction needs a broader and more up-to-date theoretical framework; it is
recommended to integrate literature published in the last five years that connects the
three main constructs and reinforces the justification of the hypotheses. It is equally
important to formulate explicit and directional hypotheses that clearly indicate the
expected relationships between the variables.
3) The methods section should describe in greater detail the participant selection
procedure, the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the justification for the sample size.
Likewise, the approval of an ethics committee and an explanation of informed consent
are missing; both elements are essential to ensure the integrity of the study. In the
description of the instruments, it is advisable to provide evidence of discriminant validity
and to address the dimension with a low consistency index, eliminating weak items or
justifying their retention. The statistical analysis section should indicate the model fit
indices and the cut-off points used.
4) The results should be presented more precisely: it is suggested to include standard
errors, confidence intervals and significance values, as well as to organise the
presentation according to the sequence of the hypotheses.
5) In the discussion, it is necessary to avoid generalisations beyond the cultural context
of the sample and to articulate the conclusions solely on the basis of the data obtained
and the literature reviewed.
6) Adding a section on limitations and proposing future lines of research will strengthen
the academic rigour of the article.

Formal and stylistic aspects: The list of references shows a predominance of sources
prior to 2020; to increase relevance and impact, we encourage you to incorporate a
significant number of recent studies, including reviews and meta-analyses. The
manuscript contains some minor punctuation and vocabulary errors, so we recommend
a professional linguistic review or one carried out by a native speaker.

I thank you again for your valuable contribution and hope that the comments and
suggestions presented will clarify key aspects of the article, strengthening its content and
increasing its impact on the scientific and educational community.

Sincerely,
External reviewer for Education Sciences (MDPI)

Author Response

1) It would be helpful to include essential information about the design, sample, and main
findings in the abstract so that the reader can immediately understand the scope of the
work.

Response: Thanks for your insightful suggestion. We have added subtitles to help readers easily catch up on each section.

2) The introduction needs a broader and more up-to-date theoretical framework; it is
recommended to integrate literature published in the last five years that connects the
three main constructs and reinforces the justification of the hypotheses. It is equally
important to formulate explicit and directional hypotheses that clearly indicate the
expected relationships between the variables.

Response: Thanks for your valuable comments. We have added Social Cognitive Theory and combined it with the onion model to explain the hypotheses. Please find it on page 5.

“ Moreover, Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 2001) may also explain this relationship. This study posits that AQ, reflecting resilience and self-efficacy in the personality dimension, enhances achievement motivation in the information processing dimension. AM, in turn, drives the use of SRLS in the outer layer. For example, Jiang et al. (2021) found that students’ cognitive learning strategies (i.e., elaboration, rehearsal, and organization), were influenced by grit through academic self-efficacy. Thus, consistent with both the onion model and Social Cognitive Theory, we hypothesize that students’ AQ influences their self-regulated learning strategies through the mediating role of achievement motivation. In other words, students’ AQ (the personality dimension in the inner layer) influences their SRLS (learning techniques in the outer layer) through the mediation of AM (the information procession dimension in the middle layer)”

Additionally, this study is exploratory research. The use of questions can offer greater flexibility. It can stimulate broader discussions and is suitable for areas that lack clear theoretical support. This approach allows researchers to explore issues without a fixed framework, thereby opening up new ideas and directions.

3) The methods section should describe in greater detail the participant selection
procedure, the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the justification for the sample size.
Likewise, the approval of an ethics committee and an explanation of informed consent
are missing; both elements are essential to ensure the integrity of the study. In the
description of the instruments, it is advisable to provide evidence of discriminant validity
and to address the dimension with a low consistency index, eliminating weak items or
justifying their retention. The statistical analysis section should indicate the model fit
indices and the cut-off points used.

Response: Thanks for your valuable comments. We have added selection procedure, criteria and justification for sample size in methods section.

“The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the first author’s affiliated university. As a criterion for sample inclusion, participants should be university students who have attended at least one semester of their course. Participants were recruited from a university in Anhui Province located in Eastern China. Participation was voluntary, and we used a convenience sampling.”

“According to theory of Kline (1989), at least 20 samples are considered per parameter in model, since there are 9 components and parameters in the model. Hence, the minimum sample size is 180.”

In terms of ethic approve, we have resubmitted the ethics approval application to the school of the corresponding author and will provide an update as soon as we receive the approval.

Regarding discriminant validity of instrument, please found it in Table1, the results section. We also provided  the model fit indices and the cut-off points used in methods section.

“Multiple fit indices were used to examine model fit, including the chi-square by degrees-of-freedom value (smaller than 3), the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI, larger than .09), the comparative fit index (CFI, larger than .09), the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR, smaller than .08), and the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA, smaller than .08) (Hu & Bentler, 1999; McDonald & Ho, 2002; Wang & Wang, 2019). In addition, Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extract (AVE) were applied to assess the convergent power (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The cutoff values for CR and AVE were .60 and .36, respectively (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The discriminant validity was identified by comparing the square root of AVE and correlations between dimensions.”

4) The results should be presented more precisely: it is suggested to include standard
errors, confidence intervals and significance values, as well as to organise the
presentation according to the sequence of the hypotheses.

Response: Thanks for your valuable comments. We have added standard errors, confidence intervals and significances values in results section. Please refer to Response 2. We will continue to use the questioning approach. Therefore, we will also maintain the original logical structure in this part.

5) In the discussion, it is necessary to avoid generalisations beyond the cultural context
of the sample and to articulate the conclusions solely on the basis of the data obtained
and the literature reviewed.

Response: Thank you for your valuable feedback. I completely agree that it’s essential to avoid generalizations beyond the cultural context of the sample. I will ensure that the discussion focuses on articulating conclusions strictly based on the data collected and the literature reviewed, maintaining the integrity of the research findings.

“Finally, there was no statistically significant association between transcendence and AM, SRLS separately. It might mean that transcendence does not necessarily lead to adaptive outcomes (i.e., AM and SRLS). From the perspective of Confucianism, individuals would focus on how to self-enhance by suffering when they have a sense of transcendence  (Jing, 2006). They are more likely to accept actively to adverse events. Although the factor of transcendence would help overcome difficulties (Jing, 2006; Wang et al., 2022; Yan et al., 2012), it is hard to promote students to develop AM and SRLS.”

6) Adding a section on limitations and proposing future lines of research will strengthen
the academic rigour of the article.

Response: Thanks for your insightful comments. We have added limitation and future direction section.

“There are several limitations in the current study. First, as the research design was cross-sectional, it is hard to claim causality. Future studies may consider a longitudinal design. Second, the data in this study were from a convenience sample, which may introduce self-selection bias. Thus, more rigorous sampling methods (e.g., a stratified sampling method) could be used in future investigations. Furthermore, the data used in this study were all from self-reporting instruments that might involve response biases. Future studies might use different sources (e.g., interviews and observations) to corroborate the statistical evidence reported in this paper.”

Formal and stylistic aspects: The list of references shows a predominance of sources
prior to 2020; to increase relevance and impact, we encourage you to incorporate a
significant number of recent studies, including reviews and meta-analyses. The
manuscript contains some minor punctuation and vocabulary errors, so we recommend
a professional linguistic review or one carried out by a native speaker.

Response: Thank you for your suggestions. We have incorporated recent studies and highlighted them in the references. For the language aspect, we will invite a native speaker to proofread and refine the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your manuscript submission to the Education Sciences journal.

It is an interesting submission, which aligns somewhat to the scope of the journal.

However, please see my feedback, which I believe may help and result in greater clarity and strengthen the paper overall.

This feedback concerns the following:

• From the outset, I believe that the title needs re-wording to avoid any confusion, and to also state clearly the geographic context and precise perspective or theme.
• I believe that additional sources should be acknowledged, when opening sentences or statements are provided to inform the reader of general assumptions. For example, such as the opening sentence of the introduction. Please review and amend, where appropriate.
• I believe that the introduction requires two further paragraphs, at the end of the section: highlighting the novelty of this research, and outlining the structure of the paper and describe the following sections.
• I suggest that you reword section 2 to a subject specific theme, instead of Theoretical Background. For example, 'Personality Traits and Behaviour', etc.
• It is helpful to provide some closing narrative after a figure or table, to close a section. Therefore, please describe the figure and include sources, or state that it is the author's construction.
• I suggest that section 5 is integrated into section 4, as you summarise the literature. This would also allow you to provide sources to justify the questions.
• Please provide some precedent literature, which acknowledged other similar studies which adopted various methodologies, including the selected approach in this paper? This, discussed in the method, provides a rationale to the reader of why the methodology here was selected.
• I believe that sections 7-10 inclusive should be merged, with subsections instead being included. All of these sections could be one section, with a few subsections.
• I suggest that 2-3 subsections are included in the discussion section, to highlight emerging themes and/or discussion points.
• At present, the conclusion is very short. It should include a revisiting of the aim; the literature and emerging questions; the need for the data collection; the findings and emerging themes; the implications for theory and practice; recommendations for future research.

Kind Regards

Author Response

• From the outset, I believe that the title needs re-wording to avoid any confusion, and to also state clearly the geographic context and precise perspective or theme.

Response: Thanks for your insightful comments.  We have revised the title to “Adversity quotient influences self-regulated learning strategies via achievement motivation Among Chinese university student. ”

• I believe that additional sources should be acknowledged, when opening sentences or statements are provided to inform the reader of general assumptions. For example, such as the opening sentence of the introduction. Please review and amend, where appropriate.

Response: Thank you for pointing out the need for broader sourcing in the introduction. I agree that the opening statements should be supported by a wider range of references to establish the general context more robustly. I will review the introduction and supplement the existing citations with additional sources that support the general assumptions about the importance of overcoming difficulties in learning and the potential role of adversity quotient. Specifically, I will look for sources that provide a broader overview of these concepts before narrowing the focus to the specific studies cited later in the paragraph. This will ensure that the introduction provides a well-supported and comprehensive foundation for the research.

• I believe that the introduction requires two further paragraphs, at the end of the section: highlighting the novelty of this research, and outlining the structure of the paper and describe the following sections.

Response: Thank your suggestion. We have revised the outline of the entire article. The novelty of this study and a brief introduction are now presented in Section 3: Research Questions.

• I suggest that you reword section 2 to a subject specific theme, instead of Theoretical Background. For example, 'Personality Traits and Behaviour', etc.

Response: Thank your point out this issue. We revised it as “Personality traits and behaviour .”

• It is helpful to provide some closing narrative after a figure or table, to close a section. Therefore, please describe the figure and include sources, or state that it is the author's construction.

Response: Thanks for your valuable suggestions. We updated figure or table accordingly.

• I suggest that section 5 is integrated into section 4, as you summarise the literature. This would also allow you to provide sources to justify the questions

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. I understand that you would like to integrate Section 5 into Section 4 to provide more sources to support the summary of the literature. However, I believe that keeping Section 5 separate better addresses the previous second suggestion. The main purpose of Section 5 is to summarize the earlier review, highlight the key contributions of this paper, and lead into the subsequent content. This arrangement allows for a clearer presentation of the research structure and logic. I hope you can understand the rationale behind this organization.  

• Please provide some precedent literature, which acknowledged other similar studies which adopted various methodologies, including the selected approach in this paper? This, discussed in the method, provides a rationale to the reader of why the methodology here was selected.

Response: Thanks for your valuable suggestion. We have added a few references using the similar method approaches. Please find the references below:

Zhang, L. X., Yan, Z., & Wang, X. (2025). Understanding music teachers’ formative assessment intention and implementation: A Chinese Mainland context. International Journal of Music Education, 02557614251315461.

Thomas-Francois, K., Jo, W., Somogyi, S., Li, Q., & Nixon, A. (2023). Virtual grocery shopping intention: an application of the model of goal-directed behaviour. British Food Journal, 125(8), 3097-3112.

• I believe that sections 7-10 inclusive should be merged, with subsections instead being included. All of these sections could be one section, with a few subsections.

Response: Thanks for point out this issue. This may have resulted from my lack of clarity when I initially wrote the article title, which led to a formatting misunderstanding by the editor. The "Method" and "Results" sections are actually two distinct major parts. The "Method" section includes three subsections: Participants and Procedure, Instrument, and Data Analysis. The "Results" section comprises three parts: Measurement Model, Descriptive Statistics and Correlations, and The Structural Model: Adversity Quotient, Achievement Motivation, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies. In light of this, we have updated the title section to avoid any confusion for readers.

 

• I suggest that 2-3 subsections are included in the discussion section, to highlight emerging themes and/or discussion points.

Response: Thanks for your insightful comment. We have added this part in discussion section. Please find it below:

“This study also showed that students’ AQ affects their learning strategies directly and indirectly. It is evident that students’ ability to deal with adversity significantly correlated with their SRLS and AM. Students with high AQ are more confident in coping with difficulties in life and academics; they are also successful in self-encouraging during learning; they tend to conduct both generals (e.g., “When reading for this course, I make up questions to help me focus my reading.”) and clarification (e.g., “If I get confused taking notes in class, I make sure I sort it out afterward.”) strategies. This finding is in line with previous studies (El-Adl & Alkharusi, 2020; Hastuti et al., 2018). For instance, El-Adl and Alkharusi (2020) found that students were more likely to use cognitive and self-related strategies when motivated to learn, had the confidence to learn, and were capable of controlling their learning. In general, the relevance of AQ is that student response to adversity might facilitate AM, thus, affecting the utilization of SRLS. Integrating the onion model, we can view AQ as part of the personality dimension, which interacts with the information processing dimension (AM) to affect learning techniques (SRLS) in the outer layer. When examining the relationships among each dimension of AQ, AM, and SRLS, we found that reach negatively correlated with SRLS via AM. This means that students with a high reach level may be less likely to utilize SRLS. The findings suggest that students’ AQ may not always positively correlate with their AM and SRLS. Therefore, it may be inappropriate to simply aggregate AQ when considering these relationships, as the dynamics are more complex and interconnected within the cognitive framework.”

• At present, the conclusion is very short. It should include a revisiting of the aim; the literature and emerging questions; the need for the data collection; the findings and emerging themes; the implications for theory and practice; recommendations for future research.

Response: Thanks for your insightful comment. We have revised this part.

“This study aimed to examine the relationship between the AQ, AM, and SRLS.  Revisiting the literature, we found that while previous studies have examined these constructs collectively, our research highlights the impact of each dimension of AQ on AM and SRLS. The data collection process was essential in uncovering these relationships, leading to findings that indicate the control and responsibility dimensions of AQ positively correlate with students' SRLS. Additionally, we discovered that the control, reach, and endurance dimensions of AQ are indirectly associated with SRLS through AM.

Emerging themes from our analysis suggest that fostering a sense of control and responsibility can significantly enhance students' ability to navigate adversity, thereby promoting effective SRLS. These findings have important implications for both theory and practice, as they underscore the need for educational strategies that support the development of these skills in students. For future research, we recommend investigating how different educational contexts may influence the relationship between AQ, AM, and SRLS, as well as exploring interventions that specifically target the enhancement of control and responsibility in students. This approach could provide further insights into improving educational outcomes.”

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript ID: education-3700191

Review date: August 1, 2025

 

Dear authors:

I have reviewed the second version of the manuscript “Adversity quotient influences self-regulated learning strategies via achievement motivation among Chinese university students” (ID education-3700191) and letter, thank you.

After examining the manuscript, I appreciate the improvements that have been made. The abstract now reports the design, sample (N = 319), and methods of analysis, which makes it easier to immediately understand the scope of the study. The sampling procedure, informed consent, and the fact that the work has been approved by the ethics committee of your university are also described in greater detail, which improves methodological transparency.

Similarly, the conceptual framework has been expanded and recent literature has been incorporated; the discussion better qualifies the inferences, and a section on limitations and future directions has been added. These improvements bring the manuscript closer to the journal's editorial standards.

To complete the evaluation with minor revisions, I propose the following adjustments, focusing on form, style, and standardization of references:

1) Title and wording in English (final polish). The first page reads “Among Chinese university student”; it should be plural (‘students’). In addition, there are minor grammatical errors in the Introduction, for example “Learning strategies is” instead of “Learning strategies are.” We suggest a final linguistic review by a native speaker to improve fluency and accuracy.

2) Instruments and Appendix A: micro-editing of items. In the examples of the Achievement Motive and learning strategies scales, there are still some unnatural turns of phrase and typographical errors that should be corrected to ensure international comprehensibility. For example: “I am attracted by task, in which test my ability” (rephrase), ‘reding’ for reading, “figure out it” for figure it out, and a space in “M10.I am...”. Adjusting these points does not alter the content, but it does improve clarity.

3) Ethics: identifying details. The text indicates approval by the Human Research Ethics Committee and explains informed consent. To close the ethical file, include the approval code/number in the manuscript and, if possible, the date of issuance of the ruling.

4) References: cleanup and standardization.

• Remove duplicates. The citation from Ergen & Kanadli (2017) appears twice; keep only one entry.
• Complete incomplete entries. For example, “Yan, Z., Mok, M. M. C., & Exercise. (2012)” appears with truncated authors/journal; complete all metadata.
• Remove residual markers. There are multiple “about:blank” that appear to be editing markers; remove them.
• Review thematic relevance. The reference “Virtual grocery shopping intention” seems tangential to the focus of the study; justify it or remove it.
• Standardize style. Ensure MDPI format (authors, year, title, journal, volume, pages) and DOI when available; correct links with spaces (e.g., the peaklearning PDF).

These actions will improve the traceability and professionalism of the listing.

Thank you very much for your work and for your careful response to the previous comments.

Sincerely,

External reviewer for Education Sciences (MDPI)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

[Response]

Dear Reviewer#1,

Thank you for your patience and providing us with thoughtful and constructive feedback. We highly value your expertise and have taken all your comments into careful consideration.

To complete the evaluation with minor revisions, I propose the following adjustments, focusing on form, style, and standardization of references:

1) Title and wording in English (final polish). The first page reads “Among Chinese university student”; it should be plural (‘students’). In addition, there are minor grammatical errors in the Introduction, for example “Learning strategies is” instead of “Learning strategies are.” We suggest a final linguistic review by a native speaker to improve fluency and accuracy.

Response: Thank you for your insightful suggestions. We have revised the title and polished the entire article.

2) Instruments and Appendix A: micro-editing of items. In the examples of the Achievement Motive and learning strategies scales, there are still some unnatural turns of phrase and typographical errors that should be corrected to ensure international comprehensibility. For example: “I am attracted by task, in which test my ability” (rephrase), ‘reding’ for reading, “figure out it” for figure it out, and a space in “M10.I am...”. Adjusting these points does not alter the content, but it does improve clarity.

Response: Thanks for your valuable suggestions. We have revised it accordingly.

M1. I enjoy putting effort into tasks even when I am unsure if I can accomplish them.

M2. I like trying new and unfamiliar tasks in my studies, even if my initial attempts are not successful.

M3. I feel excited and happy when faced with challenging tasks.

M4. I am attracted to the challenges.

M5. My interest is quickly sparked by challenges that I cannot master right away.

M6. I am attracted to the work that I am uncertain as to whether would be successful.

M7. I am afraid of failing in uncertain situations.

M8. I become anxious when I encounter new and unfamiliar tasks.

M9. I feel quite anxious about tasks when I am not sure I will succeed.

M10. I am afraid of failing in challenges where much depends on the specific opportunities.

M11. I worry about tasks that seem very difficult.

M12. I feel anxious about challenges that I cannot master immediately.

 

3) Ethics: identifying details. The text indicates approval by the Human Research Ethics Committee and explains informed consent. To close the ethical file, include the approval code/number in the manuscript and, if possible, the date of issuance of the ruling.

Response: Thanks for pointing out this issue. We have added the approval code in the methods section.

“The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the first author’s affiliated university (Ref. 2022-2023-0197)”

4) References: cleanup and standardization.

• Remove duplicates. The citation from Ergen & Kanadli (2017) appears twice; keep only one entry.
• Complete incomplete entries. For example, “Yan, Z., Mok, M. M. C., & Exercise. (2012)” appears with truncated authors/journal; complete all metadata.
• Remove residual markers. There are multiple “about:blank” that appear to be editing markers; remove them.
• Review thematic relevance. The reference “Virtual grocery shopping intention” seems tangential to the focus of the study; justify it or remove it.
• Standardize style. Ensure MDPI format (authors, year, title, journal, volume, pages) and DOI when available; correct links with spaces (e.g., the peaklearning PDF).

These actions will improve the traceability and professionalism of the listing.

Response: Thanks for your valuable comments. We have double-checked and updated the references section.

The reason we cited this reference is that a similar data analysis approach—two-step—was used in this study.

Thomas-Francois, K., Jo, W., Somogyi, S., Li, Q., & Nixon, A. (2023). Virtual grocery shopping intention: an application of the model of goal-directed behaviour. British Food Journal, 125(8), 3097-3112.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the resubmission of your manuscript to the Education Sciences journal.

I believe that careful consideration has been given to the feedback and recommendations.

The changes made are appropriate, and justified well in the author responses.

At this stage, I am happy to recommend an accept decision.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your positive feedback regarding the resubmission of our manuscript. We appreciate your careful consideration of our revisions and are glad to hear that the changes align with your recommendations.

We are grateful for your support and look forward to the next steps in the publication process.