Building Parental Capacity: Outcomes of a Therapeutic Parent Group Run Concurrently with a Social Skills Group for Their Young Person

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, it is a trend/cultural shift in the ASD community that researchers use identity first language.

 

Abstract

challenges in "managing" their child sound very confusing and negative

 

Introduction

Young people can interpret various ways. Please be specific "young people" 

p.1 line 34 - what is the everyday needs? Please be more specific.

The introduction needs to be strengthened. 

 

Method

I can't find how the authors recruit participants.

Please be more specific about the mixed method. Reference of mixed method is missing too.

Please be more specific about quant research design and qual research design.

How did you "mix" the quant and qual? 

 

 

Results

The qualitative results seem just listing of what the participants reported. I do not see the theme of the results.

 

Discussion is missing. Please include them as well to support your findings. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

minor editing

Author Response

The paper has been substantially reorganised and rewritten. Please see detailed response to reviewer comments in attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language possesses a high level of quality.

Author Response

The paper has been substantially reorganised and rewritten. Please see detailed response to reviewer comments in attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

research based concerns

1) page 1 lines 29-31 - requires a citation

2) page 1 - line 38/39 - elaborate on how social skills training improves overall functioning for these children

3) page 2 lines 85-95 - It is unclear how these themes raised by the group (which seems to be content for the results section not materials section) is being referenced; is the information from past groups? if so, this needs to be more clearly explained

4) page 5 - lines 119/120 - did fewer parents complete that particular measure, or are the authors using that as an excuse for that result and all measures were completed by few parents at all three time points? If the completion rate was different for each measure at each time point, this should be clarified using a table

5) pages 6 and 7 - It seemed to me that there was too much content about the staff perspectives/experiences, when the focus of the manuscript seems to be on the parents' experiences 

6) page 9 - line 408 - I would like more information about how the concurrent therapeutic parent group provided benefits for the children involved

7) page 9 line 410 - previously follow up was indicated to be 6 weeks, not 3 months

8) page 9 line 420 - is flexibility needed if the parent results did not indicate that the changes between groups influenced their experiences 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

1) It is unclear to me what the authors mean by young people, specifically as compared to the term 'children'?

2) throughout the abstract and introduction, it was unclear if the authors were going to discuss results from one parent group or multiple groups. This became clear after the information on page 3

3) page 1 line 19 - I think the term is 'standardized' not 'standard'

page 1 line 34 - "to meet the children's everyday needs;" within the sentence as it is currently structured, the use of the word their refers back to the families and schools 

4) page 2 line 45 - what is meant by the terms 'published' and 'suitable' in this sentence?

5) page 2 line 63/64 - there is a close parathesis missing

6) page 2 line 67 - 'evaluated the impact on family functioning' does not seem to fit at the end of this sentence

7) page 2 line 73 - what is meant by "from being completely?"

8) page 2 lines 78-80 - sentence needs to be restructured as the significant stressors are described after the additional needs of the child, so it seems that the stressors are the needs of the child

9) page 3 lines 118 to 132 - could all be converted into a table

10) page 6 - there were multiple conjunctions (e.g., didn't) used which are not appropriate for a formal manuscript 

11) page 6 line 277 - it seems that a word is missing between 'to' and 'this'

12) page 8 line 385 - I am unclear why the authors included the word 'however' in this sentence 

13) page 9 line 414 - I am unclear how 'consistent data collection' demonstrates the effectiveness of the program 

Author Response

The paper has been substantially reorganised and rewritten. Please see detailed response to reviewer comments in attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revisions are very helpful in clarifying the purpose and structure of the study. I would like to mention that all the updated paragraphs seem to be written in a very informal manner for a scientific manuscript, so I recommend someone else reading them over to edit the language and sentence structure used. 

some of the information provided on page 3 about the parent group seems to be more appropriate for a results/discussion section than an introduction. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English language is somewhat informal in the added sections; no other concerns reported. 

Author Response

I would like to mention that all the updated paragraphs seem to be written in a very informal manner for a scientific manuscript, so I recommend someone else reading them over to edit the language and sentence structure used.	All added sections have been revised to be more formally written
some of the information provided on page 3 about the parent group seems to be more appropriate for a results/discussion section than an introduction.	This section was moved from the result/ discussion due to confusion by a previous reviewer. The information here is about the group itself, rather than the evaluation, hence putting it in the introduction, to avoid suggesting that this is research data