Korean Maritime Cadets’ Onboard Training Environment Survey

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper highlights important issues of maritime students safety and well-being during time on board as trainees. However, there are some minor revisions suggested to improve the quality of the paper:

• Structure of paper (empty paragraphs such as 3. and 3.1 should be removed)
• The descriptive statistics should be visualized in a better way for clarity of the results
• The 3rd guideline, i.e., "Strengthen the preventive education of the crew on ships where cadets are present regarding assault, verbal abuse, overuse of power, and sexual harassment." should be formulated in a stronger way. If students have been assulted or sexually harrassed at a workplace, I would recommend that this ship should not be assigned students in the future.

There are also some newer references on women at sea that could complement the current studies:

Kitada, M. (2013). Code of behaviour at sea: women seafarers’ shipboard identity management. WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs, 12(2), 213-227.   Cars, M. B., & Österman, C. (2015). Mind the gap! Maritime education for gender-equal career advancement. In Maritime women: global leadership (pp. 143-153). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.   Hult, C., & Österman, C. (2015). Swedish Seafarers’ Occupational Commitment in Light of Gender and Family Situation. Safety of Marine Transport: Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation, 41-47.   Sampson, H., & Tang, L. (2016). Strange things happen at sea: training and new technology in a multi-billion global industry. Journal of Education and Work, 29(8), 980-994.   Tang, L., & Sampson, H. (2018). Improving training outcomes: the significance of motivation when learning about new shipboard technology. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 70(3), 384-398.   Lützhöft, M., Grech, M. R., & Porathe, T. (2011). Information environment, fatigue, and culture in the maritime domain. Reviews of human factors and ergonomics, 7(1), 280-322.    

 

Author Response

1. Comments and Suggestions for Authors
2. Overall

 This paper highlights important issues of maritime students safety and well-being during time on board as trainees. However, there are some minor revisions suggested to improve the quality of the paper:

 

1. Details

Structure of paper (empty paragraphs such as 3. and 3.1 should be removed)

-> Descriptive statistics had been done under two sections describing Korean maritime cadets and shipping companies. I believe that the empty paragraphs are necessary for a clearer explanation of each section.

 

The descriptive statistics should be visualized in a better way for clarity of the results

-> To achieve this, Table 4 was converted to Figure 1.

 

The 3rd guideline, i.e., "Strengthen the preventive education of the crew on ships where cadets are present regarding assault, verbal abuse, overuse of power, and sexual harassment." should be formulated in a stronger way. If students have been assulted or sexually harrassed at a workplace, I would recommend that this ship should not be assigned students in the future.

-> The following was added to the discussion (page 12; lines 365-367): “In addition, it is also necessary to establish a system to prevent cadets from being assigned to ships where those problems repeat.”

 

There are also some newer references on women at sea that could complement the current studies:

-> We have referenced the following from the papers you have suggested:

 

• Sampson, H., & Tang, L. (2016). Strange things happen at sea: training and new technology in a multi-billion global industry. Journal of Education and Work, 29(8), 980-994.
• Lützhöft, M., Grech, M. R., & Porathe, T. (2011). Information environment, fatigue, and culture in the maritime domain. Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics, 7(1), 280-322.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents a very interesting results of a survey performed on a group of maritime cadets. Although it is a good piece of science, there can still be some improvements, as listed below:

1. Lines 41-44: the sentence is quite long and difficult to comprehend. Moreover, it appears from this sentence that students shall be granted some special status and not be ordered to do 'regular job'. If that is the case, some principles of on-board training can be undermined since the very purpose of the on-board training is to get familiarised with as many aspects as ship's operations as possible. Authors are advised to express facts rather than opinions or support these with proper references;
2. Table 3 - knowing that it may be too late to raise this concern since the survey has already been completed, it would be interesting to ask (in future works perhaps) about similar facilities available to other crewmembers (officers/ratings) on the ships were cadets undertook their training;
3. Line 146 - Table 4 says that other types of PPEs were provided to cadets, but not as frequently as helmets, boots etc. Recommend to re-phrase the sentence;
4. Lines 150-156: some details were missing about the working times: whether the working hours are expressed as an average during cadets' contracts, maximum during a day etc.;
5. Line 157-166: again, additional information is necessary for the clarity of the research reporting: for instance, whether the types of 'uncomfortable' works were to be chosen from a list or typed directly, was there any sort of catalogue for these - how can watchkeeping be 'uncomfortable' for a cadet since that is supposed to be his/her future job?;
6. Line 168-172: if any form of a definition of sexual harassement was provided to the subjects, please reveal that fact so that the readers of the manuscript have a clear context of cadets' answers;
7. Lines 190-196: again, please make a note whether the answers were chosen from a catalogue provided to the cadets or obtained in some other way?
8. Line 219-225: would be interesting the breakdown of these values with respect to subjects' gender;
9. Line 267 - 'The researchers found...' sounds a bit awkward - suggestion to re-phrase it 'we found that...' or 'The results of the research indicate that...';
10. Line 292-293: the numbers do not add up to the total of 284 as surveyed, please provide an explanation for a difference;
11. Conclusions - Authors may consider moving initial paragraphs of this section to the previous one 'Discussion'. Instead, Conclusions would follow the more conservative model, i.e. what was the purpose of the research, whether and how it was achieved, what are the results and how are they significant. Thereby, by reading a short summary one would know exactly the essence of the manuscript.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf