Design and Evaluation of a Collective Preventive Program for Musical Performance Anxiety (ConfiDance)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents ConfiDance, a program for preventing / managing MPA, Music Performance Anxiety, a syndrome that affects a fair percent of musicians, and an attempt to test its effectiveness by a pilot study.

The program exploited a mix of previously positively experimented techniques, such as  reflection and sharing about various topics, breathing exercises and mindfulness, and dramatic art exercises.

The effects of the program were assessed immediately after and one year after its implementation, and the resulting effectiveness showed better after one year.

Setting a program to help music performers to overcome stage fright is a very praiseworthy endeavour, since it may give many talented musicians the opportunity to performed without being dramatically blocked by performance anxiety.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the program is not verified by the paper in a conclusive way, given the not so numerous sample (all in all, 17 subjects), which is, though, frankly acknowledged by the Authors.

Although they state that the use of repeated measures are enough to remedy the lack of quantitative reliability, it should have been better to engage more in the qualitative analysis of results. A more detailed analysis should have been given, for instance, of the focus groups and of the participant satisfaction questionnaires, both following the program and an year after.

Furthermore, when presenting the single steps of the program, the Authors should also account for why, in their hypothesis, each of them might be effective in overcoming or preventing MPA. These hypotheses could be put in correspondence with the summary of results at lines 426-434.

 

 

Table 3. is not easy to read. First, it should be much more legible putting horizontally, on the same line, instead of vertically, one below the other, the corresponding data for pre-, post-treatment, and follow up. Moreover, some data seem quite unexpected: for example, if the data are if the Subject has experienced or currently experiences MPA, it is not clear what does it mean the data “total” in each gender and in each testing time. Moreover, one would expect the answer “no” to raise across time, while this does not seem to be the case, so the Authors should provide some hypotheses to account for these strange results.

 

Finally, while the results from the answers of the only 7 subjects are quite positive, the fact that 10 of the previous 17 subjects did not answer might be interpreted as evidence of a not so effective program; or else, it would be very interesting to understand if there are some variables, for instance personality differences, that determined these subjects not to answer.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive feedback on our manuscript. We have improved each section to provide a enhanced conceptual clarity, improved methodological consistency, and superior writing quality, and to address all doubts and suggestions raised by the reviewers. We greatly appreciate these suggestions. In total, the changes and improvements made resulted in the addition of around 1000 words, four new figures, modifications and enhancements in the four tables, five new sections in the Introduction and the rephrasing or omission of certain portions of the text to ensure greater consistency in the information provided.

In Attachments, we provide a point-by-point summary of our response to your comments. These improvements are clearly highlighted in red in the attached revised manuscript. These modifications have substantially enhanced our work, and we are very grateful for your valuable input.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors Dear author I read with interest your manuscript. MPA, is a relevant condition for professional musicians. I suggest, as minor revision, to add some other limitations: lack of control groups and lack of blinding to the scope of the study. These aspects of study design increase the risck of biasses such as observational bias.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive feedback on our manuscript. We have improved each section to provide a enhanced conceptual clarity, improved methodological consistency, and superior writing quality, and to address all doubts and suggestions raised by the reviewers. We greatly appreciate these suggestions. In total, the changes and improvements made resulted in the addition of around 1000 words, four new figures, modifications and enhancements in the four tables, five new sections in the Introduction and the rephrasing or omission of certain portions of the text to ensure greater consistency in the information provided.

In Attachments, we provide a point-by-point summary of our response to your comments. These improvements are clearly highlighted in red in the attached revised manuscript. These modifications have substantially enhanced our work, and we are very grateful for your valuable input.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Study is quite interesting. Here are some comments and questions:

should provide a short sentence describing "confidance"

or what were the participants asked to do or intervention done

should also note if this is a 1 group pre/post test quasi experimental design (in the abstract and clarify more in the method section)

introduction is too long, perhaps some sub-headings or sub-sectioning 

research questions? of hypothesis?

typically literature review is not located within the method section, i think this should be the research instrument - however the authors would need to explain more about the MPA - scoring.... validity, reliability

research process should be clear - perhaps a flow chart of some sort

informed consent? IRB approval

the author/s mentioned about semi-structured interview - this should be noted and clarify within the results - this study would be a sort of mixed method? should clarify how data intersects and compliment the findings

however, more detail information should be noted for the interviews done

the author/s mentioned repeated measures, how many times? i only notice a pre and post

did you consider any control variables?

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive feedback on our manuscript. We have improved each section to provide a enhanced conceptual clarity, improved methodological consistency, and superior writing quality, and to address all doubts and suggestions raised by the reviewers. We greatly appreciate these suggestions. In total, the changes and improvements made resulted in the addition of around 1000 words, four new figures, modifications and enhancements in the four tables, five new sections in the Introduction and the rephrasing or omission of certain portions of the text to ensure greater consistency in the information provided.

In Attachments, we provide a point-by-point summary of our response to your comments. These improvements are clearly highlighted in red in the attached revised manuscript. These modifications have substantially enhanced our work, and we are very grateful for your valuable input.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accepted

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

after going over the point by point revisions made by the authors, the paper is now adequate for acceptance