Reviewer's report
Title:Ways of coping with premenstrual change: Development and validation of
a premenstrual coping measure
Version: 1Date:31 July 2013
Reviewer: Lisa Iversen
Reviewer's report:
Reviewer’s report:
Thank you for inviting me to review this interesting manuscript. As a result of the
amount of development work detailed in the paper, the manuscript is reasonably
lengthy. Some sections are a little confusing and thus the manuscript could
benefit from some re-drafting in places. There are concerns regarding the
interpretation of some of the findings.
Major Compulsory Revisions
1. Approximately one-third of the respondents were undergraduate psychology
students who were participating in the research for course credit, did the authors
consider if this potentially influenced the development of the PMCM? For
example, these students might have had knowledge of cognitive or psychological
models of coping and could this have influenced how they then responded to the
items?
2. It would be helpful if the authors describe why they chosen to assess
premenstrual change using an instrument (PSST) that matches symptoms and
impairment criteria for severe premenstrual distress. The choice of instrument
might suggest that the study is interested only in coping in relation to
premenstrual PMDD.
3. Table 2 compares the new PMCM with other general coping strategies and
states that the PMCM encompassed all the relevant coping processes in the
context of premenstrual change. There is no discussion of the general coping
processes that are not included in the PMCM. Of particular note is that
information seeking/instrumental support is not included in PMCM. Some
discussion as to why information seeking would not be important in premenstrual
coping would strengthen the paper.
4. In general the results section is confusing and jumps back and forward
between different tables e.g. Table 4 is mentioned on page 13 and then
discussed again on page 15. The Results would be clearer if each Table was
discussed once in turn.
5. Some discussion is needed of the negative correlations found between the
avoiding harm and self-care subscales of the PMCM and being able to cope with
PMS i.e. so higher scores on these subscales are associated with a lower
perceived ability to cope with PMS. These relationships don’t seem to make
sense or reflect the cited literature (p.16) e.g. so according to the correlations a
woman with high scores for the avoiding harm subscale (i.e. avoids potentially
distressing situations) has a lower perceived ability to cope with PMS but the
argument presented on page 16 is that avoidance and social withdrawal are
effective coping strategies. There are similar concerns re the self-care subscale.
6. Are there any implications for the utility of this measure because it is focused
and presented to women as being about coping? Does the concept of coping or
not have negative connotations?
Minor Essential Revisions
1. The Methods section contains lots of details (e.g. proportion of women with
premenstrual change and distress and the demographics of the respondents)
which are Results and should appear in the Results section of the manuscript
accordingly.
2. Further detail needs to be given about how the final pool of 64 items was
created e.g. did the statements come directly from the literature review or did the
authors write the statements based on the literature review?
3. For Table 6 and Table 7 it would be useful to know the total number of
responses to the open-ended items. This would provide an impression of how
much of the responses are being captured by the PMCM subscales.
4. It is important to discuss that the further work needs to be done to establish
the reliability of the PMCM particularly with regards to consistency over time.
Discretionary Revisions
1. The descriptor of women with regular menstrual periods should clarify that (21
to 35 days) refers to menstrual cycle length.
2. The authors should ensure that all abbreviations have been explained e.g.
DSM-IV, PMCM etc.
3. Page 8, it is unnecessary to state that all women in the sample reported some
level of premenstrual change given the Methods describe that women without
premenstrual changes were excluded.
4. The title of Table 4 refers to the PMCM twice – wonder if this is an error?
5. The authors should state explicitly why they do not advocate the use of a total
coping score.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.