Connectedness to Nature Does Not Explain the Variation in Physical Activity and Body Composition in Adults and Older People

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for attention to reviewer comments. 

• some editing of English is still required e.g. 'Alike' as the first word in 2 sentences,  bioimpedance is unconsidered
• for me there is still considerable data presented of marginal interest - just because the BIA device can measure it, does not mean it is important. I also found the high level of detail on BIA assessment unnecessary - you followed the manufacturer's recommendations - that's probably all that I need to know...
• insufficient detail re recruitment - i.e. what enticed respondents to read and respond to a flyer??
• overall, I think the manuscript from benefit from a editing down to a more concise paper detailing key findings. 

Author Response

Thank you for providing valuable comments that improve the original manuscript. We tried our best to improve the manuscript based on your suggestions. Please see below the attached document where we addressed your major comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Firstly, the manuscript must use the abbreviations appropriately. Even if you state that English revision was used where are plenty places within the manuscript where you still use interchangeably PA and physical activity or CN connectedness to nature. All scientists are aware of the importance of such a details and it really made me sad as this comment was given you within the first revision. 

Secondly, you have not responded properly to my objection of reliability of statistic data representation. Based on IBM SPSS by examble book (A practical guide to Statistical Dana Analysis). States that the Mann-Witney procedure tests equality of the distribution rather than means, as was the case in the two-sample t-test. Medians are usually reported for this type of data, but the Mann-Whitney test is not simply a test comparing medians unless the only difference in the two distribution is a shift in location.

While Discovering Statistics using IBM SPSS statistics wittenby Andy Field states: For the Mann-Whitney test, in keeping a good practis we ought to report something like

X Depression levels in ecstasy used (Mdn = 17.50) did not differ significantly from alcohol users (Mdn = 16.00) the day after the drugs were taken, U =35, z=-1.11, p = .283, r= -.25. The medians are reported for ech condition because this statistic is more appropriate than the mean for non-parametric tests. You could also report the mean ranks instead of the median.

I would highly encourage you to consult the statistician for the data interpretation also for correlation part.  

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for the constructive and competent criticism made particularly to our statistical treatment. We strongly believe that these comments have strengthened and elevated our work. Please see below the attached document where we addressed your major comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Please accept my sincere congratulations on your achievement, the paper sounds much better, you have worked hard to achieve this. The statistical part was improved according the suggestions - I am satisfied with the final result. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript ID: ijerph-1315715
Journal: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Connectedness to nature doesn ́t improve physical activity and body composition in adults and older people

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript. This is a highly detailed paper that seeks to evaluate nature connectivity with measured physical activity and a number of anthropometric estimates. The overall finding appeared to be that reported connectedness with nature did not seem to influence physical activity or have a positive impact on body composition. 

I found reading the manuscript challenging. 

Firstly the manuscript could be improved with more careful editing of the English grammar and being a little more concise in sections. At times incorrect words are used (e.g. allusive vs elusive), some sentences are non-sentences and sentences can be difficult to follow. 

Secondly, while the methodology is generally well presented, the analysis of data is explained in detail and subsequently reported and discussed in detail, the manuscript reads like a data dump. It feels as though everything that was measured has been presented - perhaps you could consider being more selective. For example Table 1 has 27 variables reported - do we really need to see all of these. e.g. I am happy to know mass, BMI and % body fat - the other 14 body composition variables do not add a lot in tabular form.

Overall, my view is this manuscript could be more readable and of interest to readers if you made some hard decisions on significantly reducing the the amount of data /number of variables that you present.

Specific questions/comments

You don’t explain how participants were recruited - i.e. what were they told and would this influence your sample?
I was confused by the CN scores - It looked as though the scoring range was 14-70 bu the reported mean is 3.76? I may have misunderstood but it would be nice to see the range of scores and understand this a little better.
There is reference to the seasonal influence on body weight but what were the climatic conditions during the census periods? Was it cold, wet?
A lot of credence appears to have been given to the BIA segmentation data - you hint at equivocal findings on the validity of some of these estimations - see note above about the amount of data.
Did you collect any self reporting of habitual physical activity? Seems that this would be a useful addition/comparison.

Best wishes

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is not ready to be published in its current form. There are just too many inconsistencies and the results have been over interpreted. For example, stating that our results revealed that this connection was clearer to employed people. Your sample size was far too small for such a statement.

My advice would be to keep adding subjects to the study until you have a good sample size in adults and older adults group or restrict your study as currently it is too dense 7 tables, it is filled with extra information and you somehow loose the main goal and it does not provide a pleasant reading.

The goals of the research are interesting but the study sample is too small to represent 18-75 age groups fully.

I have huge objections to the reliability of statistic data representations as mean ± standard deviation once Mann-Whitney test for data with asymmetric distribution was used.

The introduction part might be improved since you have conducted a cross-sectional study between December 2020 to February 2021 – taking into account that COVID-19 context was present.

Also, be careful with your abbreviations, since you have PA use it with all text not as full text (i.e., see LN 29, 34, 70 and further), LN 352 instead of connectedness to nature abbreviate.

LN128-129 you miss USA in (Actigraph Inc., Pensacola,FL)

Provide a scientific justification for this “valid wear day consisted of at least 10 h of wear time”.

LN 147 write MVPA instead of moderate-vigorous

Provide the information of eight contact electrodes

Limitations and Future Directions section is extensive.
The conclusion section should include the conclusions only from your research. Please reject the general knowledge, and transfer the part of the information to the discussion.