post by Szymon Olejarnik (2023 cohort)
Recently, I published the first paper from my PhD titled “The PMDWell Framework: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Video Game Players’ Wellbeing” in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, a prestigious (Q1, IF 5.8) interdisciplinary journal, blending the fields of computer science, human-computer interaction and psychology. This paper critiques the current status quo of player wellbeing literature, presents and validates a novel measure of player multidimensional wellbeing, the PMDWell, based on a theoretical framework grounded in the literature – what ought to influence wellbeing as a result of video game engagement. In this post, I will describe the publishing process, from conceptualisation and writing, through editing and addressing reviewer comments, to publication.
This paper is the first step towards broadening our understanding of how video games influence player wellbeing in the wider sense. The motivation for this paper arose during the writing process itself. I started work on this paper in early as October 2023, when I first reviewed the literature focussed on linking video games to wellbeing outcomes. Initially, this paper was meant to become the first chapter of my thesis, outlining the status quo in the literature, constituting a narrative literature review. However, it quickly became apparent that there were major research gaps on this topic in the field of video game psychology – most studies focussed on a single modality of wellbeing, with virtually no research considering wellbeing as multidimensional, as is done in other areas of psychology, or fields like economics or policy. This lent itself to another conceptual issue – cyberpsychology is dominated by research on mental health, with little attention paid to physical health or external life circumstances of the players. The disconnect between the various findings on different modalities of wellbeing proved to be the biggest issue – it was no longer viable to write this paper as a narrative review. I rewrote the very first draft of this paper as a critical review around April 2024, outlining the problems with the current knowledge base, and setting the groundwork for questionnaire construction and validation, initially planned for the following paper.
The draft of the critical review was completed in May 2024. At the same time, I finished constructing the questionnaire grounded in the critical review and began recruiting participants for the subsequent studies. Consulting on the progress of both papers with my supervisory team, it transpired that the Introduction section for the questionnaire validation paper would be virtually identical to the critical literature review, and that the two papers ought to be combined into one to make for a stronger case for questionnaire construction and validation. I converted the paper into an Introduction section, and continued recruiting participants to meet a satisfactory sample size. We finished recruitment in December 2024, and began constructing confirmatory factor analyses models based on the initial theoretical framework, with much success, yielding satisfactory statistics and reducing the questionnaire to items that were strictly necessary. Collaborating with my primary supervisor, Prof Daniela Romano, we further scrutinised the paper to ensure it met the rigour standards for publication in top-tier journals. Going through various revisions, we eventually arrived at the final draft of the paper, which was then promptly submitted to Computers in Human Behavior Reports in June 2025.
Prior experience with academic publishing taught me one thing: assume nothing, no matter how good the work may be. We did, however, pass the initial editorial checks and the paper was sent out to peer review. A month later, I received the news that the reviewers suggested Revisions. As Elsevier does not provide a split between Minor/Major Revisions, this could have meant anything, ranging from fixing minor typos to a complete rework of the paper. Browsing through the comments, it was a relief to see that the reviewers were fond of the paper and understood its novel contribution. Addressing the first round of comments took me around a week – the reviewers suggested a rewrite of one of the literature review sections, and further scrutinised the statistical analysis. This improved the quality of the manuscript significantly, as it highlighted some of the shortcomings of my analysis, thanks to which I was able to improve the models form the statistical standpoint. I addressed the comments thoroughly, resulting in 8 pages of responses to comments, fully justifying my approach and pointing out where corrections have been made. We resubmitted the paper mid-August, receiving another round of comments at the beginning of September. This time round, the comments were very minor – improving wording of the method justification, adding more information on participants below the age of 18 and improving visual distinctions between the framework diagrams. Responding to these comments took less than a day, with the paper finally being accepted on the 10th September 2025.
This paper constitutes the very first chapter of the PhD thesis – it reviews the most up-to-date literature, outlines the research gaps and validates a novel measure of wellbeing. This provides the very foundation of my PhD, and provides statistical validation for it, allowing for follow-up studies to take place. We are currently scrutinising the draft of a cross-sectional paper based on the same dataset, ahead of submission to Computers in Human Behavior. Here, we analyse the multidimensional wellbeing data in conjunction with hourly use and video game addiction to investigate how video game use interacts with wellbeing, and how this could result in addiction. The following papers will apply the same principle, with Paper 3 analysing the longitudinal version of the PMDWell dataset, and Paper 4 conducting a national-level analysis using secondary data. We also aim to dive deeper into player wellbeing, conducting a qualitative study in how players are affected by video games before, during and after engagement. Publishing this paper opens up many doors for me as a researcher, allowing for others to reproduce and further validate my method, and will certainly yield many collaborations in the coming years.
The full version of the paper is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100806