Review Reports - The Relationship between Personality Traits and Compliance with the COVID-19 Preventive Measures in Kosovo

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for reviewing their manuscript; however, several major things need to be corrected.

1) Spelling error: Abstract (mpeople),

2) The following sentence, “in comparison to the population of Sweden and Singapore” is... incomplete sentence. What about these two countries?

3) Please update the references within the last five years (2017-2022), especially those related to literature studies, methodology and discussion.

4) Please add justification for selecting the residual network model (in the measurement testing section). Please add similar studies adopted the residual network model.

5) Please need to justify support with the references or resources for adopting/adapting the questionnaire of the concerns over Coronavirus. It needs more elaboration on the methodology of the role of mediators.

6) Please add justification for having Compliance 1 and Compliance 2. What purpose? And what difference?

7) In Table 1, why are the means for some variables equal 0.00, while the means for the coronavirus is 4.35 and compliance 5.23/5.33? Please double-check for consistency and/or accuracy of numbers.

8) It needs more elaboration on the model (Figure 1). How do authors connect the independent and dependent on the side and the independent and mediators on another?

9) Please need to write the constructs of the health belief model. Why were variables added, and why were others deleted? Justify?

10) The authors need more elaboration about the extent of the effect of the beta coefficients. What do the results of the analysis meaning to the whole model and each significant variable separately? Please write in the Results Section.

11) In Figure 1, please highlight or use symbols for which factor is significant.

12) In Discussion Section, what is the percentage of compliance in the present study compared to the 90% of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada? Then justify the outcome.

13) Please write more in Discussion Section about the role of the mediator and justify the results supported with references. What is the role of mediators in the relationship between the Big-Five constructs and compliance?

Thanks

Author Response

Thank you very much for the efforts you put into reviewing our work!

Spelling error: Abstract (mpeople),

Thank you very much for pointing out the spelling error. The error on line 12 has been corrected.

The following sentence, “in comparison to the population of Sweden and Singapore” is... incomplete sentence. What about these two countries?

The meaning of the sentence is that the populations of Spain and Italy were more likely to stay home compared to the populations of Sweden and Singapore. In other words, the populations of the two first countries were more willing to apply the restrictive measures, including social distancing. We have reformulated the sentence to avoid any confusion.

Please update the references within the last five years (2017-2022), especially those related to literature studies, methodology and discussion.

Nonetheless we tried, it is extremely difficult to contain the literature for this article only within the last five years, given that the paper includes literature on personality and health models which were only published prior to five years ago. Hence, we ask for your well understanding to allow references older than five years. We checked other articles published at Psych and they also seem to use references older than five years.

4) Please add justification for selecting the residual network model (in the measurement testing section). Please add similar studies adopted the residual network model.

Please find the justification for the models used in the line 224-228 in the manuscript.

We added some lines explaining the justification for including two mediators in lines 242-245. Also, we explicitly mentioned that the scale for concerns over coronavirus is self-developed entirely and more about the scale can be found in the paper cited (i.e. Lieberoth et al. 2021).

6) Please add justification for having Compliance 1 and Compliance 2. What purpose? And what difference?

Please find the explanation in lines 204-206. We actually believe that these two items represent best the preventative measures taken by most countries.

7) In Table 1, why are the means for some variables equal 0.00, while the means for the coronavirus is 4.35 and compliance 5.23/5.33? Please double-check for consistency and/or accuracy of numbers.

Actually, the mean score of the variables was below 0.01 with a high standard deviation which can be possible for the personality traits as we expect in theory to have for example equal numbers of extroverts and introverts. We included the “<” sign that shows that the mean score was below 0.01 to clarify it.

8) It needs more elaboration on the model (Figure 1). How do authors connect the independent and dependent on the side and the independent and mediators on another?

Thank you for your comments. Actually, we believe that this is the right approach to explain the entire model as simply as possible. Thus, we explain first the relationship between the independent and the mediators and then the relationship between the mediators and the dependent variable. In lines 302 and 308 you can find the conclusion of the model.

9) Please need to write the constructs of the health belief model. Why were variables added, and why were others deleted? Justify?

The constructs of Health belief model are: risk susceptibility, risk severity, benefits to action, barriers to action, self-efficacy, and cues to action. We used the variables that we considered most relevant and applicable to our study, with a minor reformulation. In the current version we changed back the formulations to the original formulation.

Please find the summary conclusion in lines 310-313 which basically explains the entire model in other words. More about the interpretation can be found further below in the Discussion Section.

11) In Figure 1, please highlight or use symbols for which factor is significant.

In lines 313 – 316 you can find the explanation for the significant effects. For clarity, we included only the significant effects, which are in solid lines.

12) In Discussion Section, what is the percentage of compliance in the present study compared to the 90% of the US, UK, Australia, and Canada? Then justify the outcome.

We actually do not know. There is no data and within this research, we could not estimate the percentage of people who complied or did not comply with preventative measures. However, we build on the previous findings regarding compliance to justify why we included the two mediators.

In lines 372 to 386, we actually argued why the concern over coronavirus is a mediator in this case.

Thanks

ABSTRACT:

- Line 18: please, specify the predictive value (positive/negative).

The suggestion has been addressed.

- Line 18: mediated in which way?

The suggestion has been addressed.

- Lines 20&21: positively or negatively?

The suggestion has been addressed.

INTRODUCTION:

- Could you please be more specific about your research questions/hypotheses?

This would be considered as a data-driven explorative study, therefore, we would not suggest having specific questions and/or hypotheses. We actually mentioned that we will test a model and we made some predictions of the effects.

RESULTS:

- Lines 265&267: this is Table 2

Corrected!

- There is a lot of plain text with the results. Would it be possible to present them in a more transparent way? Just a thought.

We did some corrections (e.g. added a simple description at the end of the result section) and hopefully this is more clear to the audience now.

Reviewer 2 Report

GENERAL:

- The manuscript presents an interesting study on relationship between personality structure and the tendency to comply with the preventive measures, as mediated by perceived stress and concerns over COVID-19

- Information about Supplementary materials, Funding, Institutional review board statement, Informed consent statement, Data availability statement, Acknowledgments, and Conflicts of interest is missing (or I do not have access to it).

ABSTRACT:

- Line 18: please, specify the predictive value (positive/negative).

- Line 18: mediated in which way?

- Lines 20&21: positively or negatively?

INTRODUCTION:

- Lines 48&49: in what time period?

- Line 52: what is the percentage of this number?

- Line 92: please write the abbreviation in full text for the first time.

- Could you please be more specific about your research questions/hypotheses?

RESULTS:

- Lines 265&267: this is Table 2

- There is a lot of plain text with the results. Would it be possible to present them in a more transparent way? Just a thought.

DISCUSSION:

- The paragraph between lines 370&376 could also be suitable for Conclusions.

- Study limitations: you also write about implications for further research; please rename the chapter appropriately so that the title includes both parts.

- Could you say a bit more about the practical implications of your study?

CONCLUSIONS:

- Please also provide a main summary of your findings.

REFERENCES:

- The references are not formatted appropriately (in the text: must be in square brackets as shown in the template; in the References section: format as shown in the template & in the order of appearance).

Author Response

Thank you very much for the effort you put into reviewing our work.

Please find attached the response.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks to the authors for completing the corrections. I hope you can complete other corrections as much as you can. I believe your manuscript is now ready for publication.

All the best.