Title: Family Functioning and Life Satisfaction among Female University Students during
COVID-19 Outbreak: The Mediating role of Hope and Resilience
Version: 2 Date: 06 Nov 2022
Reviewer:  Zi-han Liu
Reviewer's report:
This is a meaningful survey that addressed the important effect of family function on life
satisfaction in female university students and tested the mediating roles of hope and resilience.
However, many details revisions are warranted.
First, many grammar errors appeared throughout the whole manuscript. I strongly suggest the
author asking help from the professional language edition.
Second, the current title cannot really reflect your aim and findings. It should be revised to some
expression like this " The mediating effect of hope and resilience in the association between
family functioning and life satisfaction."
Third, in the introduction, the author failed to explain why they chose female university students
as a target sample. Please address this concern.
Fourth,  in the third paragraph of the introduction"As mentioned above, social adaptation to
the COVID-19, the perception of stress, and some epidemic control measures reduced the life
satisfaction among university students (24, 25).  Therefore, factors influencing students’ life
satisfaction in the pandemic should be explored. " My concern is "What is the logic between
this two sentences?  The first sentence gives us evidence that the three factors could influence
students' life satisfaction negatively.  After knowing this, why do we still have to explore factors
influencing students' life satisfaction? It seems for me that the logic behind the two sentences is
not clear and convincing. The first sentence does not seem like a reason for the second sentence
since you used the word "therefore" to connect both."
Fifth, in the fourth paragraph of the introduction, "Balanced family in this model is without too
much consensus or too little interaction within the family has a positive effect on individual’s
life satisfaction."  My concern is, "Cannot understand this sentence; please recheck the content."
Sixth, in the method, shouldn't 'being a female' be one of the inclusion criteria?
Seventh, in the method, " history of psychological distress  was the exclusion criterion." My
concern is, "How do you define psychological distress? According to my experience, most of
the people have experienced at least once psychological distress, such as a depressive episode,
anxiety episode, etc. However, not all of them have been diagnosed with mental disorders. It
would be better if we use the word "mental disorders" instead of "psychological distress" here."
Eighth,  in the result, " The model consisted of one exogenous factor (family functioning) and
three endogenous variables (hope, resilience and life satisfaction).  "
My concern is"How do you determine which one is the exogenous factor and which one is the
endogenous one?"
Ninth, in Table 4, "LL" should be "LS" here, and so does the second row.
Tenth, as for Figure 1, in this model, why didn't you check the direct effect from family function
to subdomains of resilience and to the resilience total score since the four subdomains make up
the total resilience score? And so does the "Hope" section.
Last, in the discussion, please add "female" before "university students" in any sentence you used
to conclude or discussion your results since you only tested this model in female students and it
cannot be generated for all university students. So do the expressions in the rest discussion part.