Relationships between Coerced Sexting and Differentiation of Self: An Exploration of Protective Factors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript reports results of an online-survey of a convenience sample of N=399 young adults in Australia on their coerced sexting in relation to a) differentiation of self and b) gender.

 

The topic is timely and relevant to Sexes. However, the manuscript has room for improvement in several respects.

 

• Title is confusing and unclear. According to the conceptual model in figure 1 ALL “sexting coercion” is “unwanted sexting” – so how can there be a “relationship *between* unwanted and coerced sexting” according to title? Title needs to be improved.
• Both abstract and main text should be transparent about the fact that data was collected in Australia only. Do not overgeneralize data from Australia to ALL young people world-wide! Culturally contextualize your data explicitly.
• “The digital age has drastically altered the expression of relationships amongst young people, with sexting behaviors becoming increasingly common” -> This claim is misleading as sexting is more prevalent among older than younger people.
• “Sexting coercion is defined as the electronic exchange of sexualized text or photo content” -> This claim is not precise enough. The point is not that messages are “sexualized” but that they refer to the people involved in the communication. Pls clarify.
• The state of research on non-consensual sexting addresses the non-consensual dissemination of private sexts. E.g., https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052597 It should be explained that the MS does not include this dimension of non-consent.
• More details on recruitment are needed: How was the survey announced? As a study on “sexting” on “sexual coercion” or how? Please explain some more!
• Also pls explain the gender imbalance of the sample.
• Gender is a core variable both for the MS and the target journal. However, the paper does not provide a definition and theory of gender, does not explain how gender was measured and seems to operate with an outdated binary understanding of gender without pointing to this as a major limitation. Gender as a core concepts needs to be elaborated throughout the MS.
• The origins and original author of the differentiation of self (DoS) concept should be explained some more.
• The dimension of DoS are labeled inconsistently (e.g. capitalized “I-Position” and not-capitalized “fusion” etc.)
• Conceptual model in Figure is incomplete: Include all relevant variables and all tested hypotheses. Same with Figure 3, include numbers of hypotheses H1-H4.
• IRB statement missing.
• Informed consent statement missing
• Data availability statement missing.
• Open science: Pls provide instrument in the appendix

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper analyses relationships between unwanted and coerced sexting and differentiation of self.

The background and references were properly reported, but I think there are too many self-citations.

Moreover, the sample was quite huge, but very low information was given about its selection: which cultural extraction? which socio-economical status? It could be a great bias and it was not discussed.

There is a great gap between the numerosity of women and men: why? It was not explained. 

Also the details of the questionnaire were not made explicit, but only some examples; I think it is reductive.

The paper might be reconsidered after a deep revision.

Best regards.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of the Manuscript ID Sexes-1355691 titled "Relationships between Unwanted and Coerced Sexting and Differentiation of Self: An Exploration of Protective Factors'.

It is a pleasure for me to establish a conversation with authors as a reviewer of this paper. I appreciate the authors' attention to this topic. Overall, I think that the manuscript could benefit from a better introduction (more focused and clearer) and discussion (more extended). I also feel that different points throughout the manuscript should be better developed. Below, I will provide specific remarks that I believe are salient to the authors in order to strengthen their research.

Introduction.

Please, revise citation format and numbering (e.g., lines 36, 39, and so on). Some of them do not coincide with the reference number.

The introduction is the section that needs greater changes. I suggest the authors get to the point. In this article it is especially important to conceptually delineate the types of sexting. Recent literature on sexting has drawn criticism with respect its conceptualization and measurement. In fact, there is still no consensus on the conceptualization and measurement of some terms that this work aims to examine (e.g. General sexting, Coercive sexting, Pressured sexting). I think it is important to clearly show how these terms have been defined previously and to expose the most important gaps. The introduction section needs a further discussion on this issue.

Authors should be more precise when quoting some researches. Terminology referring to some subtypes of sexting (e.g., coercive sexting, pressured sexting) is inconsistent among some cited studies and does not always refer to the same behaviour.

With regard to the model proposed by Morgan et al. (2006) the term "Forced Unwanted Sexting" seems to make no sense. It is a term that emerges when trying to adapt a model (Morgan) referring to a phenomenon (sexual intercourse) with a nature and characteristics of its own (e.g., physical nature). I wonder what the authors' position is on this term ("Forced Unwanted Sexting"). Does it seem like a subtype of sexting to you?

In this article it is especially important to delineate the terms "coerced unwanted sexting" and "willing unwanted sexting".

In the heading "1.2. Sexting coercion and self-regulation", coercive sexting is discussed in relation to constructs beyond the "self-regulation". Other more holistic title might be more appropriate.

At the end of the introduction a new term appears: "sexting coercion victimization". This term has not been defined before.

Finally, reinforce the need and contributions of this research.

 

Method

Participants: Please, provide all information that has been asked (e.g., relationship status). It helps to better describe the study sample. This article has no tables.

Sampling procedure: Please, describe through which other social media you have recruited the participants and in which other places you have announced the research. This is important information for the audience to judge the adequacy of the method of data collection for this group age.

Administration of the questionnaire: Do the authors have statistics on the administration procedure? Number of accesses, attempts to complete the questionnaire, etc. How long did the data collection last?

Measures: For what items dichotomous and Likert scale responses were used? It is not sufficiently clear.

It's difficult to remember the number of times you did something when you ask for lifetime prevalence. It is also subjective for participants to define "semi-nude". Both aspects are limitations of the measure applied.

It is controversial how coercive sexting is identified. The fact of having been or felt pressure does not distinguish between "unwanted but consented sexting" from "coercive sexting". Someone can consent to sending a sexy photo without really wanting it because they have been asked to. In this case the person may or may not point to "pressure as a reason". The request, repeated or not over time, can be considered pressure.

"Because you felt pressured to do so" was a predefined answer option? What other default response options were there? It would be convenient to attach the questionnaire as a supplementary file.

Even the answers to the questions about "general sexting" allow to consider sexting the result of a pressure or coercion, since there is no mention about the voluntariness of the action.

What were the results of the discussion group?

What was the analytical sample (n)? Was there no missing or inconsistent data?

 

Results

There are no tables in this manuscript.

Please, include a table with the distribution of results on "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext" by sex. It would be advisable to show both dichotomized and frequency results (their distributions are important in this article). How many people were involved in both "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext"?

A table with descriptive statistics on the scores obtained in the ISD-SF would also be necessary.

The results show that sex is a significant variable: women are significantly more likely to experience both coerced unwanted and willing unwanted sexting. Thus, the more appropriate analysis strategy in the logistic regressions would be including demographic variables (¿age? and sex) to control its effect on results on both subtypes of sexting. Please include a table of results for logistic regressions.

Regarding the mediation model the authors note that linear regressions are used. To establish what relationships? Did the variables meet the corresponding conditions and assumptions? Authors applied bootstrapping? It offers analysis with higher power and better Type I error control.

The distinction between "Willing Unwanted Sexting" and "Coerced Unwanted Sexting". The strong relationship between the two behaviours may also indicate a conceptual overlapping. In fact, coercive sexting emerges from the primary question about "willing unwanted sexting".

R2 only can be interpreted as an overall performance measure of the model. The research by Steyerberg et al. (2010) explains this really well. I think it's very difficult to interpret the value of Nagelkerke's R2 itself because of the several shortcomings of the various pseudo-R2 measures. Some prominent authors like Hosmer and Lemeshow discourage users from using and reporting them at all.

Discussion

Authors should also give a clear answer as to how current research contributes to and/or filling the gaps in the field. I would suggest that the authors provide a more extensive discussion of the implications of their findings and their potential explanations. The results obtained give much more of themselves to be discussed in the Discussion section.

Be careful because results do not support that coerced unwanted sexting and willing unwanted sexting are separate behaviours.

Authors should also note the administration procedure' and measurement' limitations.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the detailed response to my comments.

Overall, I think the revision has sufficiently improved the manuscript.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

• Thank you for the detailed response to my comments.
• Overall, I think the revision has sufficiently improved the manuscript.

Thank you kindly for your response and endorsement of our study. We appreciate your feedback and the improvements based on this.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

After reading modifications, I think that the Authors followed properly all the suggestions made by the reviewers and I agree to accept it in present form.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

• After reading modifications, I think that the Authors followed properly all the suggestions made by the reviewers and I agree to accept it in present form.

Thank you kindly for your response and endorsement of our study. We appreciate your feedback and the improvements based on this.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors attempt to be reassuring that they have responded to all my concerns. However, my feeling is that the authors have quickly dispensed with the “low-hanging fruit” (adding some additional information), while attempting to “explain away” the more demanding and substantial of my critiques and recommendations (see my last review).

While this perhaps seems efficient, from their perspective, I’m now left feeling less excited about the impact of this manuscript than I was for the original submission. Without having entertained some of the more complex questions, the current version of the paper now feels like a mere extension (limitations included) of the reviews that have preceded it.  

Being aware of the effort behind a work of these characteristics, I encourage the authors to continue working on this article, taking into account the issues discussed. As it has been presented, it is not publishable.

Some notes:

The citations still do not follow the format required by the journal (e.g., line 95, Figure 1 reference and so on). It would be easily solved by using some reference manager (e.g., Mendeley).

Participants' section remains unclear. Which was to initial sample? From here, describe the different exclusion processes. Authors gave me information that does not appear in the manuscript (e.g., 825 potential participants accessed and commenced the survey).

Information on data collection strategies has not been provided. I have received a response that has not been reflected in the article (e.g., Instagram, participants were encouraged to share the link via their personal networks).

Authors finally stated that they are measuring "Unwanted Sexting" (2.3. Measures section). That is not consistent with that they wrote in the tittle (changed in this updated version), nor with that they are discussing through the article (i.e., sexting coercion).

In this latest version authors have deleted information that they said to collect in the first version of the article (e.g., relationship status).

There are several spelling and grammatical mistakes through the manuscript (e.g., line 246).

It is also inconsistent that at the end of the Data analysis section it is described "A prior analysis".

Table 1. What do you mean by Dichotomized? Grouped results? It is unclear and inconsistent with the data showed (M ¿Means), SD ¿Standard deviations?). The last abbreviations were not specified.

Table 2 is also unclear. The different acronyms were not specified.

Please, present a results table for the 3.3 section content. 

Authors also do not provide relevant results such as the distribution of results on "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext" by sex. I suggested that It would be advisable to show both dichotomized and frequency results (their distributions are important in this article). It has not been reported.

It remains contentious that analysis was performed with a small group of participants involved in both "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext". Likewise, authors do not state that bootstrapping technique was used.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

The authors attempt to be reassuring that they have responded to all my concerns. However, my feeling is that the authors have quickly dispensed with the “low-hanging fruit” (adding some additional information), while attempting to “explain away” the more demanding and substantial of my critiques and recommendations (see my last review).

While this perhaps seems efficient, from their perspective, I’m now left feeling less excited about the impact of this manuscript than I was for the original submission. Without having entertained some of the more complex questions, the current version of the paper now feels like a mere extension (limitations included) of the reviews that have preceded it.  

Being aware of the effort behind a work of these characteristics, I encourage the authors to continue working on this article, taking into account the issues discussed. As it has been presented, it is not publishable.

Some notes:

• The citations still do not follow the format required by the journal (e.g., line 95, Figure 1 reference and so on). It would be easily solved by using some reference manager (e.g., Mendeley).

Thank you for highlighting this. Although a reference manager was used (Zotero), we had some inconsistencies with the format which we believe have now been addressed, following careful proof-reading and review.

 

• Participants' section remains unclear. Which was to initial sample? From here, describe the different exclusion processes. Authors gave me information that does not appear in the manuscript (e.g., 825 potential participants accessed and commenced the survey).

Thank you for your comment: we appreciate that perhaps the wording of this section was unclear and have reworded this section for greater clarity.

 

Page 5, lines 258-266 now state “In total, 825 participants commenced the survey. Many responses were outside inclusion criteria of being aged between 18 and 21 years old and residing within Australia. Data cleaning resulted in the exclusion of 141 respondents beyond the target age range, 221 respondents with incomplete answers, and 64 respondents residing outside of Australia; leaving an analytical sample of 399 participants. This analytical sample included 272 women (M_age = 19.50; SD = 1.14) and 127 men (M_age = 19.91; SD = 1.11) recruited via convenience sampling, identifying as heterosexual (78%), homosexual (4%), bisexual (13%), and other (5%).”

 

 

• Information on data collection strategies has not been provided. I have received a response that has not been reflected in the article (e.g., Instagram, participants were encouraged to share the link via their personal networks).

Thank you for your comment: we have clarified the wording of our procedure (Page 5, Lines 267-281) to make this more clear.

 

“Ethics approval was granted by Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (Application no. HEAG-H 96_2012). An online questionnaire was distributed in July 2017, via personal social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Instagram) and paper advertisement at consenting institutions (e.g., affiliated universities and sporting clubs). A non-probability sampling method (snowball sampling, where participants were encouraged to share the link further with their own networks) was used, maximizing access to participants [49].”

 

• Authors finally stated that they are measuring "Unwanted Sexting" (2.3. Measures section). That is not consistent with that they wrote in the tittle (changed in this updated version), nor with that they are discussing through the article (i.e., sexting coercion).

Thank you for your feedback. We have altered the heading of section 2.3 to ‘Coerced Sexting’ to maintain consistency with the manuscript and the new title.

 

• In this latest version authors have deleted information that they said to collect in the first version of the article (e.g., relationship status).

We appreciate this feedback, which is valid. Unfortunately, in the initial version of the manuscript, it was reported that we had collected relationship status for participants, although this was not included in our analyses. However, on careful review in the last revision, we realised that this was incorrect and relationship status was not obtained from participants in this study. Hence, this was removed from the manuscript.

 

• There are several spelling and grammatical mistakes through the manuscript (e.g., line 246).

Thank you, this feedback,: we have carefully proof read the manuscript and believe that we have now addressed all grammatical and spelling errors.

 

• It is also inconsistent that at the end of the Data analysis section it is described "A prior analysis".

Thank you for this feedback. We are unable to identify this phrasing in Section 2.4, and hence we are unable to address this specific comment.

 

Therefore, section 2.4, page 6, line 330-352 has not been amended and states:

“A cross-sectional survey design was implemented for this study, with all data cleaned and tested for assumptions prior to analyses. Casewise diagnostics indicated no missing values. One univariate outlier was found on the Fusion subscale, and recoded back to 3.29 standard deviations above the mean [52]. No multivariate outliers were identified. Continuous scores on the DoS subscales were normally distributed, as per examination of Q-Q plots. The Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple comparisons [53]. Chi-square tests of association and logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine relationships between dichotomous variables, including gender, sexting, and DoS. Descriptive statistics were used to describe sexting behaviors and scale distributions. DoS subscales were normally distributed at each level of the sexting outcome variables and for the I-Position subscale, as assessed by Shapiro-Wilk’s test (p>.05). The Fusion subscale was moderately skewed (z = 3.7); however, a square root transformation rectified this and distributed the frequencies normally. As point-biserial correlations and phi coefficients are special cases of Pearson’s r, effect sizes are considered as follows; small: r = .10, medium: r = .30, and large: r = .50 [54]. Effects sizes for odds ratio (OR) were determined via Cohen’s d calculations, indicating; small: d = .20 when OR >1.68; medium: d = .50 when OR > 3.47; and large: d = .80 when OR > 5 [55]. The final step was to conduct a parallel multiple-mediation to examine the proposed conceptual model with DoS (I-Position and Fusion) as potential mediators between gender and sexting coercion (see Figure 2). A series of regression analyses were performed, with bootstrap samples used to calculate bias corrected confidence intervals around direct and mediated effects [56,57]. All analyses were conducted in SPSS version 24 [58] and utilized the macro PROCESS [59].”

 

• Table 1. What do you mean by Dichotomized? Grouped results? It is unclear and inconsistent with the data showed (M ¿Means), SD ¿Standard deviations?). The last abbreviations were not specified.

Thank you for this feedback. We have included clarification of the abbreviations as a footnote to the table. The descriptive statistics for the I-Position and Fusion subscales are presented in Table 1 as both a dichotomised and continuous version as per the request of an additional reviewer. The dichotomising of these variables involves the defining of groups as a categorical variable, or ‘Low’ versus ‘High’ scores across both the I-Position and Fusion subscales.

 

• Table 2 is also unclear. The different acronyms were not specified.

Thank you this feedback: again, we have included clarification of all abbreviations as a footnote to the table.

 

• Please, present a results table for the 3.3 section content. 

We appreciate this request. All results are numerically reported within the relevant paragraph, and to avoid duplicating repetitive information tables were deemed unnecessary. However, if it is a stylistic preference, we are more than happy to remove the results from the paragraph and report in table form where appropriate. Please see the numerical in-text presentation currently in section 3.3, page 8, line 396-412.

 

“To investigate Hypothesis two, whether low DoS is associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing coerced unwanted and willing unwanted sexting, two logistic regression analyses were performed with Fusion and I-Position as predictors, and coerced unwanted and willing unwanted sexting as dependent variables respectively (i.e., sent a sext yes or no). Tests of the full models were statistically reliable for coerced unwanted sexting (χ²_FullModel (2, 399) = 25.02, p < .001), and willing unwanted sexting (χ²_FullModel (2, 399) = 7.72, p = .021), indicating I-Position and Fusion reliably distinguished between engaging in both sexting coercion behaviours. R² is reported to present an estimate of overall model performance, with Fusion and I-Position included in the model together, finding coerced uwanted (R² = 0.10), and willing unwanted sexting (R² = 0.18) account for a small proportion of variability. Prediction success was moderately impressive, with 88.7% of individuals sending a coerced unwanted sext versus not sending a sext correctly predicted, and 76.2% of individuals sending a willing unwanted sext versus not sending a sext, correctly predicted. Young people with higher I-Position (OR = .91, 95% CI: .87, .95) and lower Fusion (OR = .81, 95% CI: .81, .97) were significantly less likely to engage in coerced unwanted sexting. Young people with higher I-Position (OR = .96, 95% CI: .93, .99) were significantly less likely to engage in willing unwanted sexting, however Fusion (OR = .95, 95% CI: .90, 1.01) did not significantly predict willing unwanted sexting.”

 

 

• Authors also do not provide relevant results such as the distribution of results on "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext" by sex. I suggested that It would be advisable to show both dichotomized and frequency results (their distributions are important in this article). It has not been reported.

Thank you for your request for the distribution of results of the sexting coercion variables by sex. All three of these variables are categorical (e.g., sent yes/no) and therefore are not from a normal distribution. We have provided frequency results for sex in the sample, including mean age, and standard deviation in section 2.1, line 263, which states “This analytical sample included 272 women (M_age = 19.50; SD = 1.14) and 127 men (M_age = 19.91; SD = 1.11).” Section 3.1 reports frequencies across sending a sext, a willing unwanted sext and a coerced unwanted sext in percentages, as per line 370 which states “Of the 399 respondents, the majority reported having sent a sext (74%); a quarter indicated sending a willing unwanted sext (23%); and one in eight respondents reported sending a coerced unwanted sext (12%). “

If the reviewer would like we can also provide separate regression models for males and females (as part of a Supplementary Material section).

 

• It remains contentious that analysis was performed with a small group of participants involved in both "willing unwanted sext" and "coerced unwanted sext". Likewise, authors do not state that bootstrapping technique was used.

Thank you for this feedback. We noted in our limitations section that the sample is small, with certain limitations in relation to the findings and their generalisability, particularly given the smaller cohort of men, which is consistent with the majority of survey research in this aera and more generally.

 

Our results section retains reference to bootstrapping where relevant (Refer Line 352, 425-426, and 455) for our analyses, as per our original manuscript and first revision, on line 350, page 6 “a series of regression analyses were performed, with bootstrap samples used to calculate bias corrected confidence intervals around direct and mediated effects”, and on line 427 page 8 “bias corrected bootstrap confidence intervals with 10,000 bootstrap samples was used to test the effects of gender on coerced unwanted sexting, through the potential mediators”.