New Perspectives on the Community Impact of Rural Education Deserts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please state your Research Questions and Hypotheses clearly. The article will also benefit from an established theoretical foundation. I suggest the authors to provide a separate section for Literature Review. For instance, the definition of ‘education deserts’ should be discussed more clearly. The mean age is 53.6045 with SD of 16.282. The age seems too high and not representative and it might hamper the final conclusion of the study. Analytic Approach: Is there any reason for choosing OLS regression model? Please explain your choice more clearly. Using OLS regression model with every possible variables makes the article appear convenient. There are typos throughout the paper. For instance, in the abstract, ‘effect’ should be ‘affect’. Please revise accordingly.

Author Response

The hypothesis and research question are more clearly stated in the paper. Additional text explaining the education desert was also added to the paper.

OLS regress is used because of the format of the data, and our data meets all the assumptions required for OLS analysis. Furtheremore, we believe OLS allows for a clearer understanding of the results and will therefore be accessible for a wider audience. 

The mean age in the data is representative of the aging rural population in the US. Because this study focuses on the experience of rural populations we are interested in the perceptions of all rural residents, and not just those around the typical college age. Also, respondents were limited to only those aged 18 and above. Excluding children from the calculation of a mean age is another reason why the mean age might seem high.

We also carefully edited the manuscript for typos and errors.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors ,

The article touches on an interesting topic regarding educational deserts. It also forces you to think about the education system. It also refers to social segregation. It is a contribution to the discussion on reform. The research process is not objectionable. The discussion is interesting. The conclusions are laconic. They can be deepened somewhat. 

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Response:

Conclusion: We thank the reviewer for their time and encouragement to deepen our conclusion. Additional texts and insights were added to address this reviewer’s comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you very much for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled „New Perspectives on the Community Impact of Rural Education Deserts“. The article is overall well-written, and it is of interest for the readership of Sustainability journals as it discusses the relation between community satisfaction and access to educational opportunities in rural areas.

I would like to encourage authors to consider several issues to be improved at the empirical analysis included in the article. I believe that after incorporating these issues, the paper will have a value for this journal. I hope that my comments are useful for authors, as they further develop the manuscript.

First, the authors need to provide details on how the respondents have been selected (within the household). Second, the authors need to better explain how they generate the community satisfaction variable and how did they check the reliability of the index. Also, they need to report whether the assumptions of OLS regression are met.

In my opinion, Table 1. “Descriptive data of key variables” should report percentual frequencies for variables related to education as they are ordinal variables. They should be treated accordingly in the regression models. Maybe the variables could be recoded in order to have a lower number of categories. Also, the authors need to clarify the variables regarding Proximity to Higher Education. In the text, two dummy variables are presented, while the table 1 reports one variable.

Finally, please present some limitations of your study. 

Author Response

Reviewer 3 Response:

Data and methods clarifications: Additional information the how the survey respondents were selected were added to the paper. We also clarified how the satisfaction variable was created and clarified that the questions used are a well-established measure of community satisfaction. New text was added to assure that all OLS assumptions were met.

Table 1: We also edited and improved Table 1 to improve the readability and utility of the information.

Limitations: A limitation section was added to the paper.

Reviewer 4 Report

The problem discussed in the article seems interesting, but it loses its relevance in my opinion, as shown by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The main problem is old data and, in my opinion, outdated data from 2017.

Since then, there have been significant changes in distance learning, which also affects the perception of “education deserts”. This issue should be elaborated on in paper.

When presenting the problems of education in the USA, it is worth describing the education system in this country, especially in Utah.

This will facilitate the reception of the article by non-US readers.

There is no clearly formulated aim of the work in the paper, there is only a research hypothesis (it is worth highlighting, because now it is "hidden").

Expand the Conclusions section.

Expand abbreviations, eg GED; this is particularly important for non-US readers.

In my opinion, the article requires updating the research and thorough interpretation of the obtained results presented in the research paper.

Author Response

Reviewer 4 Response:

Age of Data/COVID/US Education System: Reviewer 4 has concerns that four-year-old data is too old for this analysis. We recognize that this data was collected prior to the pandemic and have added text discussing this limitation. Although there was a disruption in the US educations system in 2020, by 2021 most institutes of higher learning in the US (and all of them in Utah and this analysis) returned to in-person learning. In fact, the Utah Commissioner of Higher Education just reported to the Utah Legislature that all but one two-year college enrollment slightly decreased. All the other four-year and two-year schools’ enrollments increased or stayed steady. This suggests that the pre-COVID issues addressed in this paper have endured and that the specially collected data from 2017 is appropriate for this analysis.

We also added text further explaining the US higher education system and how it is represented in the state of Utah.

Abbreviations: We added text to clarify all abbreviations in the manuscript.

Conclusions: Additional text was added to expand on the conclusions of this paper. This also includes the limitations of this study.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised the manuscript extensively. The paper is now suitable for publication.

Author Response

We are grateful for the reviewer's help and that they believe the paper is ready for publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

Taking into account the revisions and the answer provided by the authors to my comments, I believe that the manuscript has been improved and now warrants publication in Sustainability.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

We are grateful for the reviewer's help and that they believe the paper is ready for publication.

Reviewer 4 Report

The corrections and additions that I indicated in the review were made by the Authors. As a result, the paper gained in value.

The article requires an editorial correction, see, for example, lines 217, 388. It is also worth transforming Table 1 so that it fits on one page.

Author Response

We have carefully edited the paper and addressed the needed corrections. 

We attempted to reformat Table 1 to fit on one page, but the font becomes too small to read. However, we have reformatted Table 1 to improve the overall readability of the information.