The Effect of Pre-Service Teachers’ Family Adaptation on Anxiety: A Moderated Mediating Effect
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
OBSERVATIONS TO AUTHORS
Introduction
36-37 It would be better to reference with WHO global values for adolescents, available at News, Fact Sheets, adolescents mental health (2019); or, if they are available, local data, than the reference of USA adults with no date.
84-85: Some words (“and can pass”) seems not belonging to the sentence.
107-109
It says: “family adaptation, regarded as an individual resource”. Family qualities can’t be regarded as individual resources, since they are at the microsocial level in the ecological models (Microsystem), not at the individual one. Authors needs to clarify what they want to express here. Of course, there are differences between individual (adolescents) regarding the availability, quality, and stability of their social support systems, being their families one of the principals. But family adaptation is a property that belongs to the family as a group. That’s something important to consider also when the authors discuss the results.
118-121
H3 formulation needs to be clearer, by example: the strength of the association between Family adaptation and Zhongyong thinking vary according to the level of intentional self- regulation. It will be weaker at lower intentional self-regulation and stronger at higher intentional self-regulation. Fig. 1 should include the expected direction of the relations between variables (+ or -) on the arrows.
Method
Participants
128-130 are duplicated at 139-141.
Authors need to explain what validity criteria applied to consider invalid the questionnaires eliminated from the study.
Measures
The name of the scale selected to measure the Zonghyong thinking could be mistranslated. From my point of view, “mediocre” seems inadequate to express the concept of balanced or equilibrate thinking, that I understood as Zonghyong. Because I have a different cultural background and English isn’t my first language, I recommend the authors to reconsider this translation with somebody that knows both, the concept and the cultural nuances of both languages, Chinese and English, to honor the name of the instrument.
Also is important to stablish why this scale measures the Zonghyong thinking style.
Results:
Referent to the structural path analysis, it should include the usual measures of fit of the model to data, as Satorra Bender index, RMSA and CFI, and also the percentage of variance that the model explains.
Discussion
306-307: Mental sub-health is a concept that’s not previously defined or explained. I recommend explain it clearly or substitute for a more descriptive word
308-310: Even when this statement is correct (family influence adolescent socialization skills, and also school bullying), it doesn’t add to the discussion and is not pertinent here, since the study is not about the influence of family on adolescents’ socialization and involvement in violent behaviors.
Off course several dimensions of family functioning, especially parental warmth or harshness, communication, support and supervision can link adolescent’s internalizing problems as anxiety and externalizing problems as violent behavior, but that is not the scope of this research.
To improve the quality of the discussion I recommend referring to the hypothesis exposed in the introduction, explaining if they were confirmed or not. That’s especially important regarding H3, because the effect of Intentional self-regulation on the association between family adaptability and Zonghyong thinking resulted negative, contrary to author’s hypothesis. That should lead to careful consideration of the possible explanations. I think is an interesting result, and the explanation could be related to contextual cultural factors, including gender roles. It seems that self-regulation is goal directed. ¿How this drive toward a goal interacts with adaptability and Zonghyong thinking? ¿Which differences could be found between girls and boys in these variables? These questions could enrich the discussion, and differences by gender can be added to the results.
References:
418 (1) - I recommend replace this reference with an updated official source and refer to Global adolescent values instead of USA adults rates. Authors could find such values at World Health Organization webb page.
473 (19) - Bronfenbrenner ref. is duplicated at number 42
533 (45) - García Martínez ref. is duplicated at number 47.
It requieres some minor corrections.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
Quality of English Language
( ) I am not qualified to assess the quality of English in this paper
( ) English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible
( ) Extensive editing of English language required
(x) Moderate editing of English language required
( ) Minor editing of English language required ( ) English language fine. No issues detected
Author’s Response# Thank you for pointing this out, we have done a thorough review of language of the manuscript.
Reviewer’s Comment: 36-37 It would be better to reference with WHO global values for adolescents, available at News, Fact Sheets, adolescents mental health (2019); or, if they are available, local data, than the reference of USA adults with no date.
Reviewer’s Comment: 84-85: Some words (“and can pass”) seems not belonging to the sentence.
Author’s Response# Thank you for pointing this out, we have done a thorough review of grammar, etc.
Reviewer’s Comment: 107-109
It says: “family adaptation, regarded as an individual resource”. Family qualities can’t be regarded as individual resources, since they are at the microsocial level in the ecological models (Microsystem), not at the individual one. Authors needs to clarify what they want to express here. Of course, there are differences between individual (adolescents) regarding the availability, quality, and stability of their social support systems, being their families one of the principals. But family adaptation is a property that belongs to the family as a group. That’s something important to consider also when the authors discuss the results.
Author’s Response# Thank you for the comment. By ‘family adaptation’ we expressed the individual quality of copying and adaptation with the family system which in in-line with the existing literature and our study.
Reviewer’s Comment: 118-121
H3 formulation needs to be clearer, by example: the strength of the association between Family adaptation and Zhongyong thinking vary according to the level of intentional self- regulation. It will be weaker at lower intentional self-regulation and stronger at higher intentional self-regulation. Fig. 1 should include the expected direction of the relations between variables (+ or -) on the arrows.
Author’s Response# Thank you for the valuable opinion, we updated the figure accordingly.
Reviewer’s Comment: 128-130 are duplicated at 139-141.
Authors need to explain what validity criteria applied to consider invalid the questionnaires eliminated from the study.
Author’s Response# Thank you for notifying this issue. We removed the participant’s details from the ‘Procedure’ section. Besides, the exclusion criteria were added in the same paragraph.
The exclusion criteria were dual submission (both online and offline), not provided socio-demographic information, and incomplete submission.
Reviewer’s Comment: The name of the scale selected to measure the Zonghyong thinking could be mistranslated. From my point of view, “mediocre” seems inadequate to express the concept of balanced or equilibrate thinking, that I understood as Zonghyong. Because I have a different cultural background and English isn’t my first language, I recommend the authors to reconsider this translation with somebody that knows both, the concept and the cultural nuances of both languages, Chinese and English, to honor the name of the instrument.
Also is important to stablish why this scale measures the Zonghyong thinking style.
Author’s Response# ‘Zhongyong thinking’ is already well-established in psychological literature. We adjusted “mediocre” to “Zhongyong” in the manuscript to reflect the scale. There is not a clear direct translation of the word to English, other than its meaning “Doctrine of the Mean,” so we will keep the words the same, as you suggest, to honor the name of the instrument. Below are some articles for reference on the construct, which as mentioned is well-established in the psychological literature—these demonstrate why this scale would measure this style of thinking:
Gao, R., Huang, S., Yao, Y., Liu, X., Zhou, Y., Zhang, S., Cai, S., Zuo, H., Zhan, Z., & Mo, L. (2022). Understanding Zhongyong Using a Zhongyong Approach: Re-examining the Non-linear Relationship Between Creativity and the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 903411. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.903411
He, Y., & Li, T. (2021). Mediating model of college students’ Chinese Zhongyong Culture Thinking Mode and depressive symptoms. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, Volume 14, 1555–1566. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.2147/prbm.s327496
Lang, Y., Zhang, F., & Yin, J. (2022). Team Zhongyong thinking and Team Incremental and radical creativity. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 7(3), 100196. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.jik.2022.100196
Wei, H., Xu, H., Chen, W., & Lu, L. (2023). Zhongyong thinking (doctrine of the mean) and internet addiction: The mediation of maladaptive cognition and the moderation of subject. Frontiers in public health, 10, 1045830. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1045830
Wu, C.H. & Lin, Y.C. (2005). Development of a zhong-yong thinking style scale. Indigenous Psychological Research, 24. 247-300. (In Chinese).
Zhang, N., & Li, D. (2023). Mind the gap: How zhongyong thinking affects the effectiveness of media use on pro-environmental behaviours in China. Environmental Communication, 17(4), 437–451. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1080/17524032.2023.2206977
Zhou, S., & Li, X. (2022). Zhongyong thinking style and resilience capacity in Chinese undergraduates: The chain mediating role of cognitive reappraisal and positive affect. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.814039
Zhou, Z., Hu, L., Sun, C., Li, M., Guo, F., & Zhao, Q. (2019). The effect of Zhongyong thinking on Remote Association Thinking: An EEG Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00207
Zhou, Z., Zhang, H., Li, M., Sun, C., & Luo, H. (2020). The effects of Zhongyong thinking priming on creative problem‐solving. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 55(1), 145–153. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1002/jocb.441
Reviewer’s Comment: Referent to the structural path analysis, it should include the usual measures of fit of the model to data, as Satorra Bender index, RMSA and CFI, and also the percentage of variance that the model explains.
Author’s Response# Thanks for your comment for strengthening the analysis of our manuscript. We have done the Moderated mediation analysis through PROCESS macro where model fit info are not available.
For the second part of your comment (percentage of variance that the model explains), we referred to the percentage of variance in Table 2 (R2), where the value was mentioned.
Reviewer’s Comment: 306-307: Mental sub-health is a concept that’s not previously defined or explained. I recommend explain it clearly or substitute for a more descriptive word
Author’s Response# We agree that mental sub-health is not very clear, we meant for it to say “mental health” and have now changed it to this when it appears in the manuscript.
Reviewer’s Comment: 308-310: Even when this statement is correct (family influence adolescent socialization skills, and also school bullying), it doesn’t add to the discussion and is not pertinent here, since the study is not about the influence of family on adolescents’ socialization and involvement in violent behaviors.
Off course several dimensions of family functioning, especially parental warmth or harshness, communication, support and supervision can link adolescent’s internalizing problems as anxiety and externalizing problems as violent behavior, but that is not the scope of this research.
Author’s Response# We have removed the irrelevant portion from the section.
“and the correlation between family adaptation and aggressive behavior of college students has also been confirmed [36].”
To improve the quality of the discussion I recommend referring to the hypothesis exposed in the introduction, explaining if they were confirmed or not. That’s especially important regarding H3, because the effect of Intentional self-regulation on the association between family adaptability and Zonghyong thinking resulted negative, contrary to author’s hypothesis. That should lead to careful consideration of the possible explanations. I think is an interesting result, and the explanation could be related to contextual cultural factors, including gender roles. It seems that self-regulation is goal directed. ¿How this drive toward a goal interacts with adaptability and Zonghyong thinking? ¿Which differences could be found between girls and boys in these variables? These questions could enrich the discussion, and differences by gender can be added to the results.
Author’s Response# Thank you for the comment. We explained in more explicit ways now.
Reviewer’s Comment: 418 (1) - I recommend replace this reference with an updated official source and refer to Global adolescent values instead of USA adults rates. Authors could find such values at World Health Organization webb page.
Author’s Response# We updated accordingly.
Reviewer’s Comment: 473 (19) - Bronfenbrenner ref. is duplicated at number 42
Author’s Response# We removed the duplicate reference and updated the whole section.
Reviewer’s Comment: 533 (45) - García Martínez ref. is duplicated at number 47.
Author’s Response# We removed the duplicate reference and updated the whole section.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Editor,
Thank you for allowing me to review the article, The Effect of Pre-service Teachers' Family Adaptation on Anxiety: A Moderated Mediating Effect.
The article's keywords are: family adaptation; Zhongyong thinking style; intentional self-regulation; pre-service teachers.
The manuscript aims to explore the impact of family adaptation on anxiety, as well as the role of Zhongyong thinking style and intentional self-regulation in this relationship.
Studying the effect of pre-service teachers' family adaptation on anxiety with a focus on the moderated mediating effect contributes to our understanding of the complex interplay between family dynamics, psychological processes, and mental health outcomes. It provides insights that can guide interventions, support systems, and policies aimed at promoting the well-being of pre-service teachers and optimizing their educational experiences. Therefore, the study is significant.
Attention is needed in the section on Methods where multiple sentence repetitions are noted, i.e., row 128–130 under participants is also repeated on row 139–141 under procedure. Similar information is delivered in rows 135–136 and 145–146.
Based on my preliminary comprehension, my suggestion to the author(s) is that the manuscript be accepted after minor revision.
Best regards,
Author Response
Reviewer’s Comment: Attention is needed in the section on Methods where multiple sentence repetitions are noted, i.e., row 128–130 under participants is also repeated on row 139–141 under procedure. Similar information is delivered in rows 135–136 and 145–146.
Author’s Response# Thank you for the valuable comment. We excluded the duplication from ‘Procedure’ section.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Congratulations for your hard work.
