The Role of Emotions, Moral Disengagement and Gender in Supporting Victims of Bullying
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The current research examines differential responses to bullying by gender and other constructs. While the topic is interesting, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed moving forward. The most significant issue with the research is that the methods and procedures are very unclear. The author(s) state that “incidental sampling” took place. More specificity is needed here. The author(s) need to be more precise in describing sampling procedures. The authors also state that all respondents “completed all the items in the research questionnaires.” Are we to understand that this sentence is meant to imply that there was absolutely no missing data, item-missing or otherwise? How is this possible? The authors also need to take greater care to describe survey instruments, etc. I would also note that there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors in the text. The manuscript should be heavily copy-edited.
Author Response
We highly appreciate your suggestions contributing to an improvement of our work.
According to your recommendations, following modifications were made:
-The number of participants from the beginning of the research to the final selection of 1029 students, who completed every item of the questionnaire were specified (l. 75-78).
-The information about the survey instruments were expanded (l. 93-94; 97-101; 104-107).
-The sampling procedure is describe more in detail (l. 110-113).
-The whole manuscript was revised in order to eliminate spelling as well as gramatical mistakes.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you, I enjoyed reading the manuscript. The study is very meaningful as bullying is an issue that needs to be adequately addressed by researchers to better inform educators and policy makers. Presented are some suggestions that you may consider to improve the manuscript.
(1) the study only used quantitive statistical correlational methods to analyse self-reported survey data. That is barely enough for reporting descriptive statistics.
(2) Suggestion: a much better quantitative analytical method for descriptive statistical report would be the use of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), since SEM can be used to do a combined analysis of the potential relations between H1, H2, H3, and H4, namely, gender differences in response to bullying, namely more help behaviour being shown by females (H1); significant differences in moral disengagement and emotions according to bullying behaviour (H2); the students who support victims would display low moral disengagement and experience negative emotions (unpleasant) in the face of bullying (H3).
(4) Suggestion: if the authors find it difficult or confusing to use SEM analysis using AMOS, an easier software they can consider using is SmartPLS https://www.smartpls.com/
(5) The problem with using frequentist approach to analyse bully is that significant results might not emerge if there are 'not enough numbers' of bully issues or worst-case 'Black Swan' incidences that might not occur so frequently, so using frequentist approach to analyse bully incidences might not be suitable. Suggestion: if the authors would like to consider doing inferential predictive modelling using their existing dataset, perhaps they can consider using the Bayesian Network approach to do 'Key Driver Analysis' of the conditions that drive bullying, or of the conditions that contribute to bullying-prevention. Two easy-to-use software packages that the authors can use to achieve this are https://www.bayesialab.com/ and https://www.bayesserver.com/
(6) No qualitative interviews or focus groups were mentioned in the manuscript. This is highly unusual for studies related to bullying. Suggestion: given the seriousness of bullying issues, it would be prudent for the researchers to have included qualitative interviews with the participants to understand more about the issues they experienced, rather than relying only on a self-report survey data. Please kindly consider interviewing the participants and including qualitative interview data in your manuscript, in order to achieve a more balanced methodical research approach.
Thank you!
Author Response
We highly appreciate your suggestions contributing to an improvement of our work.
However, multinomial logistic regression is being more often used in studies about bullying. We have chosen multinomial logistic regression because the work´s objective was to analyse how moral disengagement and emotional component are associated with the different behaviours in face of bullying. Both of them are considerated in excluding categories. The analysis of multinomial logistic regression has enabled us to know the probability of the intervention of the study variables in every alternative response to bullying. This achieve may help to develop schedules for intervention. Furthermore, the number of subjects in each category is adequate for the application of this method (74.3%, proactive behaviour, 11.1% pasive behaviour, 14.6% active behaviour). On the other hand, the other reviewers have considered adequate the analyses undertaken. The investigation team handles the software Lisrel and they used it also in previous interventions. In this case the multinomial logistic regression was chosen as it was considered more appropiated to the study objectives.
Following your recommendations, which we considered very interesting, we have included the multinomial logistic regression as limitation of our work/suggestion to continue the line of research (l. 293-298; 303-305).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors!
Thank you for taking up a very interesting topic of combating bullying. It is certainly an issue that deserves investigation.
In my opinion, the paper is overall valuable but some of its elements need improvement.
The list of shortcomings to be removed is presented below:
1) The title should be changed as it does not fully reflect the content of the paper. The term „moral disconnection” (apart from the title) appears only once in the text /line 64/. The order should be introduced regarding the use of terms, i.e. authors should clearly state whether they perceive "moral disconnection" synonymously with "moral disengagement".
In my opinion, the Authors should modify the title, emphasizing the role of variables that are analyzed in the supporting victims of bullying, as eg.: “The role of Emotions, Moral Disengagement and Gender in Supporting Victims of Bullying”.
2) It is also worth mentioning the limitations of incidental sampling, as i.a. limited representativeness of research and lower scientific soundness of this sample selection method.
3) Was the gender of the respondents the only variable worth attention? Maybe it is worth analyzing due to the variable of the respondents’ age? Are there any differences between 12-year-olds and 19-year-olds? If they are not present, it is also worth mentioning.
4) The structure of the article should be modified. I think it would be better for the reader if the Authors provide Discission and limitations as section 4, and then conclusions in section 5.
We currently have a discussion section that is too long and additionally includes elements of both limitations and conclusions. This makes reading the text difficult.
After removing a few indicated defects, I am happy to recommend the text for publication, as a contribution to an important topic of bullying counteractions.
Best regards,
The reviewer.
Author Response
We highly appreciate your suggestions contributing to an improvement of our work. According to your recommendations, following modifications were made:
-We have modified the title of the manuscript according to the one suggested by the reviewer because we find it more descriptive.
-We have replace the term “moral disconnection” with "moral disengagement” in the whole manuscript.
-The age variable did not provide significant differences in the bullying behaviour. The results of the contrast have been included. (l. 136-140).
-We have divided the section of Discussion to facilitate the read of the text. We have added the sub-heading of Limitations and included the section of Conclusions and Practical Implications (l. 286; 307).
-The use of the incidental sampling has been included as a limitation for our research results (l. 288-290).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
N/A
Author Response
According to your recommendation, the whole manuscript was revised in order to eliminate mistakes.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Here are some suggestions to improve the paper to achieve higher publishing impact. Please kindly consider the following:
(1) The authors need to include a "Research Problem" section after the Introduction section in the manuscript. This is standard practice in journal papers. To demonstrate the novelty of this manuscript, and the value of the contribution to the body of research, the authors need to clearly describe why other analytic techniques used by other researchers are not sufficed, and why this technique used by the authors in this manuscript is better.
(2) Also, in the "Research Problem" section, the authors need to clearly explain how this study addresses the gaps that are not addressed in other studies. For example, how the particular sample of participants is special in some context that has not been looked into before in other studies, etc.
(2) The authors need to include a "Research Questions" section and clearly present each hypothesis H1, H2, and H3. Presently they were only suddenly mentioned in lines 66-70, but the formal NULL Hypothesis statements of H1, H2, and H3 must be presented properly to the reader first. This is standard practice in journal papers that utilize quantitative analysis.
For example, each hypothesis could be presented as follows:
(Modified from line 66) Null Hypothesis H1: There is NO different gender difference in response to bullying, namely more help behaviour being shown by females.
(Modified from line 67) Null Hypothesis H2: There is NO difference in moral disengagement and emotions according to bullying behaviour.
(Modified from lines 68-70) Null Hypothesis H3: There is NO difference in the students who support victims would display low moral disengagement and experience negative emotions (unpleasant) in the face of bullying.
(4) It is important to state whether each NULL Hypothesis of H1, H2, and H3 were REJECTED. In quantitative statistical analysis, it is not proper to write about whether each hypothesis is valid or accepted. Each Null Hypothesis can only be Rejected, or Not Rejected. Thank you for your kind attention.
Thank you for considering these suggestions. All the best!
Author Response
We highly appreciate your suggestions contributing to an improvement of our work.
According to your recommendations, following modifications were made:
- The whole manuscript was revised in order to eliminate mistakes.
- We have added the sub-heading of Research Problem (l. 68), and Research Questions (l. 89).
- We have included how this study addresses the gaps that are not addressed in other studies and we have described why we used the multinomial logistic regression (l.69-87).
Any previous survey has analysed the relationship between bullying behaviour in conjunction with the moral disengagement as well as both positive and negative emotions. A preliminary exploratory study is necessary to investigate the relationship between the cognitive and emotional component and the different ways in which adolescents react towards bullying. The objective of the current study was to analyze how active, passive and proactive behaviour in face of bullying and specifically the supporting behaviour to the victims, with moral disengagement and emotions (positive and negative) relate to each other.
Logistic regression was considered more appropiated that confirmatory techniques because this was an exploratory study. The study aim was to analyse how moral disengagement and emotional component were associated with the different bullying coping strategies. Additionally, the multinomial logistic regression allow us to know the probability of association between the study variables for each alternative response to bullying. Results of the multinomial logistic regression can facilitate the elaboration of prevention and intervention proposals.
This study offers new insights from previous research. To help victims of bullying it is necessary to increase the support behaviour, but also to reduce the active and passive behaviours. The current study was focused on the different ways of reacting towards bullying, simultaneously considering active, passive and proactive behaviour. Moreover, the different proactive answers were analysed to become aware of the relation between moral disengagement and emotions of helping behaviour to the victim.
- We have included the null hypothesis in Introduction (l. 98-104) and Discussion (l. 228, 233, 244).
Therefore, the following null hypotheses are proposed:
Null Hypothesis H1: There is NO different gender difference in response to bullying, namely more help behaviour being shown by females.
Null Hypothesis H2: There is NO difference in moral disengagement and emotions according to bullying behaviour.
Null Hypothesis H3: There is NO difference in the students who help victims would display low moral disengagement and experience negative emotions (unpleasant) in the face of bullying.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for following my recommendations.
The text is suitable for publication in its current form.
Best regards,
Reviewer
Author Response
Thank you for your kind attention and consider our work.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The revised manuscript has been improved by the authors after following the amendments suggested by the reviewer.
