How COVID-19 Information Fear of Missing out Increases the Risk of Depression and Anxiety: Roles of Resilience and Personality Types

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript "How COVID-19 Information Fear of Missing Out Increases the Risk of Depression and Anxiety: Roles of Resilience and Personality Types"

I find the aim of this study, to explore the relationship between Covid-19 FOMO and PSychological distress considering also the mediating role of resilience and the moderating role of personality types, very interesting. 

Some annotations:

- in section 2.1:

Sampling procedures, particularly the methodology selected, should be described in more detail. The participation fee for research should also be reported. Despite the large sample size, an a priori or a posteriori sample power test should be reported equally. 

- In the section 2.2: 

For both the COVID-19 information FOMO scale and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale adopt the expression "revised this scale into a Chinese version." What you mean by "revised" should be specified. If you have made language changes (i.e., translation and adaptation) you should report at least the fit indices (GFI, TLI etc.) or include the absence of these analyses in the "limits" section.

- In the section 3.1:

A "see table 1" should be inserted.

In the section 4.4

Given the interesting results of the study, I think the practical implications section could be more expanded by focusing on how these findings could be used in interventions (including for other potential collective trauma events)

Overall, the study is well constructed, the methodological part is clear and well described; in my opinion, the results obtained from the Latent Profile Analysis are particularly interesting and, even more than the findings on resilience, could be interesting starting points for intervention projects. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and professional suggestions concerning our manuscript entitled “How COVID-19 Information Fear of Missing Out Increases the Risk of Depression and Anxiety: Roles of Resilience and Personality Types” (ID: behavsci-2923743). Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with approval. The response to the reviewer’s comments is as follows:

Reviewer #1

Comment 1: in the section 2.1: Sampling procedures, particularly the methodology selected, should be described in more detail. The participation fee for research should also be reported. Despite the large sample size, an a priori or a posterior sample power test should be reported equally.

Response 1: Regarding sampling procedures, we adopted the convenient sampling method, which is supplemented in section 2.1 and marked with yellow fluorescence. As for the participation fee, each participant was paid 5 RNB yuan after completing the questionnaire published by the online questionnaire star, this content was also supplemented and highlighted in section 2.1. A posterior sample power test was reported in section 2.1: We adopted G*Power 3.1 to calculate the posterior sample power of this study, using the minimum correlation coefficient as the effect quantity, setting α = 0.05, total sample size = 1442, and finally getting the power value (1-β = .12).

Comment 2: in the section 2.2: For both the COVID-19 information FOMO scale and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale adopt the expression "revised this scale into a Chinese version." What you mean by "revised" should be specified. If you have made language changes (i.e., translation and adaptation) you should report at least the fit indices (GFI, TLI etc.) or include the absence of these analyses in the "limits" section.

Response 2: The specific process of revising the scale is as follows. In this study, we first translated the original English scale to Chinese, then asked an associate professor of psychology to revise it, and finally formed the Chinese scale. As for the fit indices, we added the content in section 2.2: The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the fit indices-CFI/TLI=1, and all factor loadings ranged from 0.75 to 0.89, reaching the significance level (ps < .001), which indicated that the structural validity of the model was good.

Comment 3: In the section 3.1: A "see table 1" should be inserted.

Response 3: The "see table 1" was inserted in the section 3.1 and this was highlighted in yellow.

Comment 4: in the section 4.4: Given the interesting results of the study, I think the practical implications section could be more expanded by focusing on how these findings could be used in interventions (including for other potential collective trauma events)

Response 4: The practical implications section was been expanded and detailed. The specific contents are as follows and highlighted in yellow. First, colleges can provide customized group psychological counseling programs for overcontrollers to improve their resilience. Second, the state and government should compile the reporting strategy for possible mass trauma incidents like COVID-19 and collaborate with all facets of the community to efficiently disseminate relevant scientific information. Third, the state and government should also be concerned about the mental health of the population and offer psychological aid, such as setting up several psychological hotlines, in the event of a large public health disaster (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). By taking these steps, college students' sense of security can be increased, and information FOMO and the mental health issues it might create can be decreased.

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript further investigates the concept of COVID-19 information FOMO and how it might relate to depression and anxiety. 

The manuscript expands the current literature and, with some revision, will make a contribution to the field. Main concerns include adding further acknowledgement of the limitations and expanding the discussion.

Specific comments:

-Throughout there are some minor problems with language.

-In the abstract, it would be useful to add more specifics to the last sentence to indicate the relevance on the current study.

-The Cronbach’s alpha for extraversion is .54, which is below what is usually considered acceptable. This should be acknowledged as a limitation to conclusions made about relation to extraversion.

-In Table 4, please include effect sizes for F values.

-The CIF only includes 3 questions that are general and do not explicitly ask about what types of information the individuals are experiencing the FOMO.  It would be useful to have a more in depth survey that breaks out the CIF into FOMO for categories like medical information, news of impact, social impact, etc.  This breakdown would seem particularly important for extension to public health messaging.

-Many of the prior works cited collected data at earlier timepoints in the pandemic (e.g., March/April 2020). Please include a brief discussion of how COVID-19 FOMO may have changed from the beginnings of the pandemic to the time this data was collected and how that may have impacted results.

-Another difference between the data collected in 2020 vs. 2022 is the amount of government/social restrictions.  It would be helpful to briefly provide a context of the restrictions/changes that undergraduates in China in 2022 would have experienced and how that had changed since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Some minor editing needed

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and professional suggestions concerning our manuscript entitled “How COVID-19 Information Fear of Missing Out Increases the Risk of Depression and Anxiety: Roles of Resilience and Personality Types” (ID: behavsci-2923743). Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with approval. The response to the reviewer’s comments is as follows:

Reviewer #2

Comment 1: Throughout there are some minor problems with language.

Response 1: We corrected the language errors in the article and they were highlighted in yellow.

Comment 2: In the abstract, it would be useful to add more specifics to the last sentence to indicate the relevance on the current study.

Response 2: The specifics were added in the last sentence of the abstract, and were highlighted in yellow.

Comment 3: The Cronbach’s alpha for extraversion is .54, which is below what is usually considered acceptable. This should be acknowledged as a limitation to conclusions made about relation to extraversion.

Response 3: We acknowledge that this is indeed a limitation of this study and add it to section 4.3 limitation of the paper: Third, Cronbach’s alpha for extraversion is .54, which was not acceptable. So, this limited the conclusions made about the relation to extraversion.

Comment 4: In Table 4, please include effect sizes for F values.

Response 4: We added partial η² as effect sizes for F values in Table 4.

Comment 5: The CIF only includes 3 questions that are general and do not explicitly ask about what types of information the individuals are experiencing the FOMO. It would be useful to have a more in depth survey that breaks out the CIF into FOMO for categories like medical information, news of impact, social impact, etc. This breakdown would seem particularly important for extension to public health messaging.

Response 5: Your comment is very constructive and we added it to the limitation in section 4.3: Fourth, CIF included only 3 general questions and did not break down CIF into FOMO categories, such as medical information, impact news, social impact, etc. The guidance that extended to public health messaging was weakened.

Comment 6: Many of the prior works cited collected data at earlier timepoints in the pandemic (e.g., March/April 2020). Please include a brief discussion of how COVID-19 FOMO may have changed from the beginnings of the pandemic to the time this data was collected and how that may have impacted results.

Response 6: Thanks for your comments. However, in our study, we did not conduct a longitudinal design for examining the changes in COVID-19 FOMO from the early pandemic to the late pandemic (the date of data collection), therefore we could not provide a scientific discuss of how COVID-19 FOMO changes and how the changes impact our results. We added your comments to the limitation.

Comment 7: Another difference between the data collected in 2020 vs. 2022 is the amount of government/social restrictions. It would be helpful to briefly provide a context of the restrictions/changes that undergraduates in China in 2022 would have experienced and how that had changed since the beginning of the pandemic.

Response 7: Thanks for your comments. A similar response to the above comments. Our data was not longitudinal data, and one important issue this that our study only focused on an individual level, we did not focus on how the government’s policy changes individual psychological statements. So, we did not measure the context variables on the restrictions/changes originating from the policy. In addition, the participants were from many universities across different locations, and each university may have its specific student management rules based on the location pandemic seriousness, thus different students may have various perceptions of the restrictions/changes. Thus, we could not provide the exact restrictions/changes perception that undergraduates in China in 2022 would have experienced and how that had changed since the beginning of the pandemic.