Serial Mediation Models of Future Anxiety and Italian Young Adults Psychological Distress: The Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Non-Pathological Worry
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI have carefully reviewed the manuscript, titled “Serial Mediation Models of Future Anxiety and Italian Young Adults Psychological Distress: The Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Non-Pathological Worry”. The study was to examine the incidence of Future Anxiety on psychological distress in young Italian adults, presenting and evaluating the simultaneous mediating effect of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Non-Pathological Worry.
The study has some strong points, yet, I would raise some points that need to be addressed.
Introduction:
1) The Introduction section should be more detailed and precise, with more information on future anxiety from a developmental perspective
2) Can you present psychological and medical mechanisms responsible the relationship of future anxiety with intolerance of uncertainty and non-pathological worry (p. 3).
3) It would be beneficial to provide more information on the mediating associations between future anxiety and distress (p. 3).
4) Hypotheses should include the direction of correlation coefficients, i.e. positive or negative character.
Method:
5) How did you handle missing values in your data? (If any exist)
Results:
6) The results are properly presented.
Discussion:
7) What are the underlying mechanisms responsible for this result: “both Intolerance of Uncertainty (see Ind1) and Non-Pathological Worry (see Ind2) are significant mediators in the relationship between Future Anxiety and Psychological Distress” (p. 11).
8) p. 12 – if you used the serial mediation models for Stress, Anxiety and Depression, it should be more clearly described.
9) p. 12 – H7 should be more thoroughly discussed in the context of gender differences
Author Response
I have carefully reviewed the manuscript, titled “Serial Mediation Models of Future Anxiety and Italian Young Adults Psychological Distress: The Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Non-Pathological Worry”. The study was to examine the incidence of Future Anxiety on psychological distress in young Italian adults, presenting and evaluating the simultaneous mediating effect of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Non-Pathological Worry.
The study has some strong points, yet, I would raise some points that need to be addressed.
Introduction:
1) The Introduction section should be more detailed and precise, with more information on future anxiety from a developmental perspective
- This comment was taken into consideration. We have added what was requested in the introduction.
2) Can you present psychological and medical mechanisms responsible the relationship of future anxiety with intolerance of uncertainty and non-pathological worry (p. 3).
- We have made the requested changes. We have further specified the relationship between the psychological variables in our study in the Introduction.
3) It would be beneficial to provide more information on the mediating associations between future anxiety and distress (p. 3).
- This comment was taken into consideration. We have added what was requested in the introduction. However, we would like to emphasize that Future Anxiety and the related scale for measuring the construct were recently introduced in psychological research (2019). Even more so in Italy where the construct was introduced in 2022. As we report in our paper, the literature on the construct and its relationship with other variables is not particularly thorough. Our study seeks to enrich what has been said so far on Future Anxiety by inserting new insights.
4) Hypotheses should include the direction of correlation coefficients, i.e. positive or negative character.
- We have included a specific hypothesis on correlational analyses with character of direction, as requested.
Method:
5) How did you handle missing values in your data? (If any exist)
- The dataset produced no missing data.
Results:
6) The results are properly presented.
- We thank you for the positive feedback to this section
Discussion:
7) What are the underlying mechanisms responsible for this result: “both Intolerance of Uncertainty (see Ind1) and Non-Pathological Worry (see Ind2) are significant mediators in the relationship between Future Anxiety and Psychological Distress” (p. 11).
- This comment was taken into consideration. The additional information in the “introduction” section to respond to previous feedback and changes made in the “Discussion” section should make what is required clearer. We believe his comment is valuable, but we would like to point out that while the literature is very rich regarding the relationship between Intolerance of Uncertainty and Worry and between these variables and psychological distress, few studies have instead delved into the relationship between Future Anxiety and our mediating variables, given the recent introduction of the construct. For these reasons, we consider our findings a strength aimed at deepening precisely this gap present in the literature.
8) p. 12 – if you used the serial mediation models for Stress, Anxiety and Depression, it should be more clearly described.
- In the discussion, we specified that serial mediation models were conducted for the variables stress, anxiety and depression. The similar results of the mediation analyses for the three outcome variables (conceptualized collectively as Psychological Distress) led us to maintain a more unified discussion to avoid excessive redundancy. This structure seems to us to make the paragraph more coherent and flowing.
9) p. 12 – H7 should be more thoroughly discussed in the context of gender differences
- This comment was taken into consideration. We have explored this topic in more detail in the “Discussion” section.
We would like to thank for your helpful comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Editor,
Dear authors, I read the manuscript with interest.
All in all it is well written, except for a few minor suggestions, which could be taken into consideration:
Abstract. I would insert the % of male and female gender
Keywords: I would put them in alphabetical order
Introduction:
If the pandemic trauma has slatentized and potentiated prior psychological distress - line 46, I would also insert this study: 10.1007/s11469-020-00277-1
Mediation analysis
This section is well written, but I would try to include a Sobel test to make it more robust.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
I would insert, or at least emphasise better, that the sample is mostly from southern Italy, and that this places limitations on the generability of the results.
The rest, honestly, seems well written.
Author Response
Dear Editor, Dear authors, I read the manuscript with interest.
All in all it is well written, except for a few minor suggestions, which could be taken into consideration:
- We thank you for the positive feedback to our work.
Abstract. I would insert the % of male and female gender
- We have made the requested change.
Keywords: I would put them in alphabetical order
- We have made the requested change.
Introduction:
If the pandemic trauma has slatentized and potentiated prior psychological distress - line 46, I would also insert this study: 10.1007/s11469-020-00277-1
- We thank you for the suggestion. Since it is relevant to the topic and context of our research, we have added it.
Mediation analysis
This section is well written, but I would try to include a Sobel test to make it more robust.
- Thank you for the positive feedback regarding the methodology section. We have added Sobel's tests.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
I would insert, or at least emphasise better, that the sample is mostly from southern Italy, and that this places limitations on the generability of the results.
- We have stressed this limit more in the dedicated section
The rest, honestly, seems well written.
- Thank you for your feedback.
We would like to thank for your helpful comments.
