Supporting the Five Cs of Positive Youth Development Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Impact on Adolescents’ Bullying Behaviour

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The analyzed research presents the impact of an intervention program on the development of youth competence, confidence, character, caring, and connection. Designing an intervention program that supports youth positive development represents the main strength of the article. Using a mixed methodology for designing the intervention adds value to the study. Therefore, I formulate the following comments to improve the current state of the manuscript:

Major comments:

1. The abstract must be revised because the lines 14-17 are repeating
2. In the abstract, the authors must emphasise which PYD components were improved following the intervention
3. The theoretical connection between PYD intervention and bullying behaviour is not clearly stated
4. The authors must be cautious in interpreting the result p < 0.10 as significant
5. The authors must detail a bit more the activities included in the workshops tailored around the five PYD components.

Minor comments:

1. The authors must use the MDPI reference system

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comments that allowed me to improve the manuscript.

First of all, I changed all references according to MDPI reference system.

Regarding major comments:

1. The abstract must be revised because the lines 14-17 are repeating.
2. In the abstract, the authors must emphasise which PYD components were improved following the intervention

Thank you for noticing this. I revised the abstract and emphasised all PYD components that changed after the intervention.

3. The theoretical connection between PYD intervention and bullying behaviour is not clearly stated

The theoretical connection between PYD intervention and bullying behaviour is explained in the Introduction under the title Interventions promoting positive youth development and their impact on bullying and victimization. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether bullying behaviour changes after the intervention even when it is only marginally mentioned in an intervention whose main focus is the promotion of the Five Cs of PYD. Further, the aim was to test the theoretical link of the PYD paradigm whether supporting thriving indicators, named the Five Cs, leads to lower levels of bullying and victimization.

4. The authors must be cautious in interpreting the result p < 0.10 as significant

Cautions about the marginally statistical results were added to the Discussion and also to the Limitations section.

5. The authors must detail a bit more the activities included in the workshops tailored around the five PYD components.

Thank you for providing this comment since I was not sure if additional activities should be included. Examples of the activities for each PYD component (each C) were added in the table regarding workshop objectives.

Reviewer 2 Report

Small sample sizes always present challenges in attaining statistical significance.  A couple more conceptual aspects to consider.  One of our problems with all attitudinal research is levels of specificity, in which we usually measure attitudes at a very general level, which does not connect to actions on the very specific level.  In this case it appears both the interventions and measures are at general levels, but may not be connected by the subjects.  Another aspect to consider is that in training, especially skill specific or technical training, one of the lessons learned is how much they do not know or how limited their skills are (which they did not realize before) and if this is foremost in their mind, it could lower their competence scores, even while they may have actually gained in competence.  One of the problems I find with many students is that they are not aware of how much they have learned, as so much of what they learn is not context specific much of the time.  Also, with most learning, but especially socio-emotional learning, it is not just the concepts that need to be learned, but the chance to implement and put into practice and gain competency in the practice, hopefully with mentoring and guidance.  Short duration interventions might not provide this sort of support, while long term lesson intergration might.  Changing social rules can change the context and disrupt the results as noted, do not see any way to account for this.  The implementation of learning styles such as cooperative or group learning might be more effective long term interventions that would more directly impact both character and caring.

Author Response

Thank you for providing such a thorough understanding of interventions aimed at improving specific social and emotional competencies. I agree that the intervention included in the research article was short, but it was carried out during a specific time (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic) when young people were suffering extremely. Therefore, even spending more time online with schoolmates could have improved their well-being.

Nevertheless, the whole PYD paradigm is rather general, as it emphasizes all developmental regulations (interactions between individuals and different contexts) that are important for youth development. Thus, it is impossible to find appropriate measures that would be tailored to specific activities in the intervention because, as you mentioned, we are assessing attitudes at a very general level. I agree that social and emotional competences in particular need more time, space and also motivation to be acquired and integrated into one's life. I am aware that the intervention should be longer in order to have a real impact on these competences, but due to difficulties in approaching students during school hours, this was not possible at that time.

Based on your comments and suggestions, I have added another paragraph in the discussion section about the difficulties of measuring the effects of the intervention with established PYD measures that are too general and provided additional ways to include more contextual information even after the intervention.