Religious Views of Suffering Profile Groups during COVID-19

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting study with suggestive conclusions, applicable across various settings including clinical practice and broader understanding of impact of COVID crises.

The study context was US and particularly California. It has potential applicability across religious and national communities, suggesting further research with similar or broader framing.

Author Response

1. Interesting study with suggestive conclusions, applicable across various settings including clinical practice and broader understanding of impact of COVID crises.

• Thank you for this positive feedback

 

 

2. The study context was US and particularly California. It has potential applicability across religious and national communities, suggesting further research with similar or broader framing.

• We’ve now added this point in future directions, stating “Future studies may also want to explore the views of suffering in other religious and non-religious traditions, across different regions and countries, or more closely examine worldviews of Christian sub-groups” (line 455-457)

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read your interesting paper. I think it is ian important topic, but more work needs to be done on the manuscript before it is ready for publication.

Introduction

Your study seems to be based in the USA. Please clarify your comments in the Introduction regarding the impact of COVID so that it is easy for readers to understand the context of your content, as restrictions were not uniform across countries.

In the introduction you conflate 'religion' and 'spirituality' when giving evidence regarding the positive impacts of each, please define your terms so readers can understand the difference, or else limit your citations to those describing the impact of religion.

Page 4 line 162, it is important to stress the need to use all subscales for all participants - could you comment on the subscales with 'nontheistic language' containing potentially religious constructs, such as punishment (as another way to framing retribution) for example (which you suggest further down).

Page 4 line 204 ff. I am aware that this journal asks you to list Materials and Methods AFTER the results and discussion, but I think readers need a little more information in the introduction to be able to understand the results. Please add a sentence to describe your target participant group and the setting of the study. 

LIne 206. I don't understand what you mean by 'outcomes of their religiousness and well-being'. Do you mean the impact of their religiousness etc, if so on what parameters?

Results. Please describe your demographic data at the  beginning of this section ie number of participants, their characteristics etc (please see my comments below). 

Discussion

The summary of your results in the first paragraph is very helpful for readers, and I appreciate your inclusion of a theoretical basis for your results.

Limitations

Your sample appears to be a convenience sample, which is a limitation of the study as it reduces the generalisability of your results. Please comment on your recruitment strategy as a limitation.

Line 398: are you saying that this study is an example of Christian views of suffering because you have a predominantly Christian sample? Please make this explanation clearer.

Line 431 - please give some examples of unhealthy and maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Practical implications - you suggest that the VOSS will be useful in the clinical context. Would you please comment on the practicality of administering a 30-item questionnaire in the clinical context?

Materials and Methods

Your methods section is insufficient. Please read the information for authors on the journal website. Please explain how the participants were selected, what inclusion and exclusion criteria were used, how they were contacted, how they received surveys etc. You need to give enough information that others can replicate your study.

Line 472: participants cannot be 'presented with informed consent'. They are informed about the study and asked to give consent. Please reword this section.'

Line 463: demographics of the participants should be in the results section, not the Materials and Methods section.

You have not given any information about the analysis of your data in this section, please amend by giving a summary of your approach here. I realise that a study like this will need to have some discussion of analysis methods in the Results section to describe what you are reporting.

Author Response

Introduction

1. Your study seems to be based in the USA. Please clarify your comments in the Introduction regarding the impact of COVID so that it is easy for readers to understand the context of your content, as restrictions were not uniform across countries.

• Good suggestion. We have now specified the context being “In the United States, …”  (line 34)

2. In the introduction you conflate 'religion' and 'spirituality' when giving evidence regarding the positive impacts of each, please define your terms so readers can understand the difference, or else limit your citations to those describing the impact of religion.

• We now limit this section to using the term religious. In re-reading Park & Folkman (1997), they actually used the term religion instead of spiritual.  Thus, we’ve revised the statement to “Park & Folkman (1997) also associated the activation of religious beliefs and experiences as one of the mechanisms in meaning-making coping.” (line 108)

3. Page 4 line 162, it is important to stress the need to use all subscales for all participants - could you comment on the subscales with 'nontheistic language' containing potentially religious constructs, such as punishment (as another way to framing retribution) for example (which you suggest further down).

• We have revised the statement accordingly, which now states, “Even though the final two subscales do not use theistic language, they contain potentially religious constructs, such as punishment. Thus, Hale-Smith et al. (2012) emphasized the importance of using these subscales even with religious populations.” (line 167-169)

4. Page 4 line 204 ff. I am aware that this journal asks you to list Materials and Methods AFTER the results and discussion, but I think readers need a little more information in the introduction to be able to understand the results. Please add a sentence to describe your target participant group and the setting of the study. 

• We have now added this statement, “Targeted sample of participants were those who identified as religious/spiritual.” (line 214-215)

5. LIne 206. I don't understand what you mean by 'outcomes of their religiousness and well-being'. Do you mean the impact of their religiousness etc, if so on what parameters?

• We have now revised the statement to “This study sought to examine the association between individuals’ theodicies at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and their religiousness and well-being.” (line 213-214)

6. Please describe your demographic data at the  beginning of this section ie number of participants, their characteristics etc (please see my comments below). 

• We have now moved the participants section to the beginning of the Results section.

Discussion

7. The summary of your results in the first paragraph is very helpful for readers, and I appreciate your inclusion of a theoretical basis for your results.

• Thank you for this positive comment

Limitations

8. Your sample appears to be a convenience sample, which is a limitation of the study as it reduces the generalisability of your results. Please comment on your recruitment strategy as a limitation.

• We have included this limitation to point, which we now state, “Fifth, most participants in this study were Christians from a convenience sample recruited through a snowball approach.” (line 453-454)

9. Line 398: are you saying that this study is an example of Christian views of suffering because you have a predominantly Christian sample? Please make this explanation clearer.

• We have now clarified this point, but revising the statement to “While our findings from a predominantly Christian sample add to the existing literature on Christian views of suffering during COVID, …” (line 434-435)

10. Line 431 - please give some examples of unhealthy and maladaptive coping mechanisms.

• We have added an example, and we now state, “Many turned to unhealthy and maladaptive coping mechanisms (e.g., substance abuse) in the face of COVID-19 risks (Park et al., 2020).” (line 470-471)

11. Practical implications - you suggest that the VOSS will be useful in the clinical context. Would you please comment on the practicality of administering a 30-item questionnaire in the clinical context?

• We have revised the statement to illustrate. We now state, “For example, the VOSS can be used, either as a full assessment scale or verbal discussion of sample items, to identify risk factors for experiencing distress in how they view suffering.” (line 464-465)

 

Materials and Methods

12. Your methods section is insufficient. Please read the information for authors on the journal website. Please explain how the participants were selected, what inclusion and exclusion criteria were used, how they were contacted, how they received surveys etc. You need to give enough information that others can replicate your study.

• We have now added the following description, “They were invited by email and social media with a link to access the Qualtrics online survey. Participants were first informed that the study was to investigate Navigating COVID – Christian Views and Experiences and needing to be at least 18 years of age to be eligible.” (line 232-235)

13. Line 472: participants cannot be 'presented with informed consent'. They are informed about the study and asked to give consent. Please reword this section.'

• Thank you for the feedback, which we’ve revised accordingly. We now state, “Participants were first informed that the study was to investigate Navigating COVID – Christian Views and Experiences and needing to be at least 18 years of age to be eligible. They were asked to give consent to participate, and then directed to a set of demographic questions, followed by several measures.” (line 233-236)

14. Line 463: demographics of the participants should be in the results section, not the Materials and Methods section.

• We have now moved the participants section to the beginning of the Results section.

15. You have not given any information about the analysis of your data in this section, please amend by giving a summary of your approach here. I realise that a study like this will need to have some discussion of analysis methods in the Results section to describe what you are reporting.

• We have now added a section - 2.2. Data Analysis Plan. In this section, we state, “To investigate the research questions of this study, we will first calculate a series of descriptive statistics, such as the mean, standard deviation, and Cronbach alpha for each study variable. We will next use cluster analyses to classify participants into profile groups based on their VOSS scores. Finally, we will conduct a series of ANOVA to compare the profile groups on study variables.” (lines 238-243)

Reviewer 3 Report

I did read with interest the submitted manuscript and I found it a relevant piece of good research in the field of religion, coping and wellbeing.

I am convinced that the article deserves to be published. Some comments can help perhaps to the authors before providing the definitive version.

First, it is a pity that using the online data recruitment approach the authors were unable to collect but just 233 participants. The collection time was taking place during lockdown, but I guess more cases could be recruited, Some explanation or apology would be welcomed.

It is strange, from my own experience, to find the descriptions of the sample, method, and scales just at the end of the article; it would be good to remind the readers that those information would be provided in that ending sections.

The authors could consider some other relevant studies on religion and COVID recently published, and getting to similar outcomes, like:

Berenika Seryczyńska, Lluis Oviedo, Piotr Roszak, Suvi-Maria Katariina Saarelainen, Hilla Inkilä, Josefa Torralba Albaladejo and Francis-Vincent Anthony, Religious Capital as a Central Factor in Coping with the Covid-19: Clues from an International Survey European Journal of Science and Theology, April 2021, Vol.17, No.2, 67-81.

I found some minor typos, which need correction: line 268: "valanced"; line 489: "DRUEL"

Author Response

1. I did read with interest the submitted manuscript and I found it a relevant piece of good research in the field of religion, coping and wellbeing. I am convinced that the article deserves to be published. Some comments can help perhaps to the authors before providing the definitive version.

• Thank you for the compliment of our study.

 

2. First, it is a pity that using the online data recruitment approach the authors were unable to collect but just 233 participants. The collection time was taking place during lockdown, but I guess more cases could be recruited, Some explanation or apology would be welcomed.

• We’ve added into the limitations point five that “most participants in this study were Christians from a convenience sample recruited through a snowball approach.” (line 454)

 

3. It is strange, from my own experience, to find the descriptions of the sample, method, and scales just at the end of the article; it would be good to remind the readers that those information would be provided in that ending sections.

• We have now moved the participants to the Results section. However, having the Method at the last section is following the template for the Religions journal.

4. The authors could consider some other relevant studies on religion and COVID recently published, and getting to similar outcomes, like: Berenika Seryczyńska, Lluis Oviedo, Piotr Roszak, Suvi-Maria Katariina Saarelainen, Hilla Inkilä, Josefa Torralba Albaladejo and Francis-Vincent Anthony, Religious Capital as a Central Factor in Coping with the Covid-19: Clues from an International Survey European Journal of Science and Theology, April 2021, Vol.17, No.2, 67-81.

• Thank you for the suggestion. We have now added this citation (line 82) and included in the reference list (line 708-710)

5. I found some minor typos, which need correction: line 268: "valanced"; line 489: "DRUEL"

• Thank you for catching these, which we’ve now fixed (line 303)

Reviewer 4 Report

1. Abstract is essentially well-constructed. It’s worth adding that research was carried out at the beginning of pandemic as the length of pandemic may modify the perception of phenomena analysed in the article.

2. The Introduction accurately describes the psychological consequences of the pandemic, especially at its beginning. However, some sentences are not precise enough, e.g. line 70-71 “less attention has been given to investigating the attitudes and characteristics of how people have coped religiously or spiritually to the challenges of the pandemic”  whereas this issue was already investigated during the first year of the pandemic (databases show over 20 000 results for this issue only in the year 2020).  

3. The introduction of the article includes the description of the research tool (The Views of Suffering Scale (VOSS), which, in my opinion, is unjustified and it makes the presented contents seem chaotic. Moreover, the description of the tool as of one of the applied measures is included in the part: Materials and Methods / Measures.

4. The section: Materials and Methods should appear before Results. In the present version of the article the obtained results were presented first and they were followed by the description of research group and of the applied tools and procedures, which is illogical. It may be a technical error, but the ordering of the indicated sections in the article is definitely a necessity.

5. The description of the research group contains necessary information. Research tools are characterised basically in a correct way. However, I’d suggest indicating Cronbach’s alpha values which were obtained in the studied sample and not in the publications of the tool’s authors. Moreover, Cronbach’s alpha for the scale  COVID-19 Stress is missing.

6. Results are presented in a correct, orderly and clear way.

7. The Discussion needs completing. The results concerning cluster analysis were analysed with the reference to one source and it is also worth referring them to the results of other studies. The majority of the publications mentioned in the article was published before 2020 so they did not take into account the pandemic, therefore it would be a good idea to add the new data to the discussion.

Author Response

1. Abstract is essentially well-constructed. It’s worth adding that research was carried out at the beginning of pandemic as the length of pandemic may modify the perception of phenomena analysed in the article.

• In the abstract we do note that “This study examined the association between individuals’ theodicies at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and outcomes of their religiousness and psychological well-being.” (line 4-6)

2. The Introduction accurately describes the psychological consequences of the pandemic, especially at its beginning. However, some sentences are not precise enough, e.g. line 70-71 “less attention has been given to investigating the attitudes and characteristics of how people have coped religiously or spiritually to the challenges of the pandemic”  whereas this issue was already investigated during the first year of the pandemic (databases show over 20 000 results for this issue only in the year 2020).  

• We have now revised this statement and indicate that “relatively less attention has been given to investigating the attitudes and characteristics of how people have coped religiously …” (line 73-74)

3. The introduction of the article includes the description of the research tool (The Views of Suffering Scale (VOSS), which, in my opinion, is unjustified and it makes the presented contents seem chaotic. Moreover, the description of the tool as of one of the applied measures is included in the part: Materials and Methods / Measures.

• Because the study is based on views of suffering, and the many different types of views, we think it’s important to provide a brief description of the VOSS in the intro. We also think it is important to provide readers the VOSS framework early on especially given that the Methods/Measures section is at the end of the manuscript based on the structure of this the journal Religions.

4. The section: Materials and Methods should appear before Results. In the present version of the article the obtained results were presented first and they were followed by the description of research group and of the applied tools and procedures, which is illogical. It may be a technical error, but the ordering of the indicated sections in the article is definitely a necessity.

• We are also aware that the order described by this reviewer is the typical order for psychology journals. However, we are following the template of the journal Religions.

5. The description of the research group contains necessary information. Research tools are characterised basically in a correct way. However, I’d suggest indicating Cronbach’s alpha values which were obtained in the studied sample and not in the publications of the tool’s authors. Moreover, Cronbach’s alpha for the scale  COVID-19 Stress is missing.

• All the Cronbach’s alphas of the currently study are indicated in the diagonal of Table 1, including the one for the COVID-19 Stress. Since it was adapted for this study, there were no prior Cronbach’s alpha to report from past studies.

6. Results are presented in a correct, orderly and clear way.

• Thank you for the feedback.

7. The Discussion needs completing. The results concerning cluster analysis were analysed with the reference to one source and it is also worth referring them to the results of other studies. The majority of the publications mentioned in the article was published before 2020 so they did not take into account the pandemic, therefore it would be a good idea to add the new data to the discussion.

• We conducted a literature search of cluster profiles based VOSS during early 2022, and wasn’t able to identify any, which we noted at the end of the introduction (lines 201-203).

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your work on this paper, which I think is much improved. However, I think the methodology requires more clarification before this paper is suitable for publication.

1. What is the context for this study? You say the participants were invited, but where did they come from? Where did you advertise the study? Did you target certain groups? Do you know what your response rate was? Did they need to be Christian to be eligible? Was anyone excluded?
2. It is not correct to just move the Participants section to the Results section. Some information belongs in each. Demographic information about your cohort, response rates, etc belongs in Results. Ethics approval information belongs in Methods. Recruitment information, consent process, collection period etc belongs in Methods. Please look at the author information on the journal website to structure your paper. You should give sufficient information that someone else could replicate your study by reading what you wrote.

I think it is worth persevering to improve this paper as it will be a valuable addition to the literature.

Author Response

1. We informed potential participants that the study was about Navigating COVID – Christian Views and Experiences, but the only explicit eligibility info on the invitation was to be at least 18 years old to be eligible to participate. In other words, only those who somehow self-identifies with having Christian views would likely self-select to attend.  Therefore, our study targeted those who self-identified as having Christian views/experiences based on the study description info.  Due to the nature of the snowball recruitment approach, we do not have information of the response rate. When screening the dataset based on the item of religious orientation, we noticed that there were 22 participants who completed the survey but indicated “none” for that item.  Those 22 participants were excluded.  As noted in the participants section a few indicated “other” (3%; e.g., spiritual, agnostic) for religious orientation.  We have made revisions to the manuscript to provide a bit more detail. (see 4.1 Procedure section)
2. Thank you for this suggestion, as this is our first time submitting an article to the journal Religions with the Method section being at the end. We have now moved the recruitment info, consent process, data collection period, etc to the Method section. We also added a subsection to describe the statistical software used for the data analyses of this study.