Investigating the Adaptive Thermal Comfort of the Elderly in Rural Mutual Aid Homes in Central Inner Mongolia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well constructed and well presented. I have small concerns as follows;
- In the abstract, please provide the number of participants. Date and year which the data were collected. It is also important to provide analysis method before reporting the results.
- Regarding the introduction, I think it contains so much redundant information. Please summarize paragraph 1-3 and please clearly indicate exiting problems. What are the problems if elderly group's perceived thermal sensation, thermal preference, and their adaptive behavior of the elderly are not considered. It would be more convincing it authors could provide the data confirming the existing problem such as an increase in the number of the old people who experience illness due to bad whether.
- In the introduction, please clearly explain the meaning of thermal sensation, thermal preference, and adaptive behavior of the elderly.
- In the table 1, The full term of TSV, TCV, and TCV should be indicated. They were mentioned for the first time.
- Please present types of questions used for measuring thermal sensation, thermal preference, and adaptive behavior, and please explain how the questionnaire was developed. They were adapted from other studies or were created by authors.
- Did this study get approval from research ethic committee. please provide the number of approval.
Author Response
We appreciate your suggestions regarding our paper, and we have responded to your comments below.
Point 1: In the abstract, please provide the number of participants. Date and year which the data were collected. It is also important to provide analysis method before reporting the results.
Response 1:We agree with the reviewer's opinion. In the abstract, we have added the number of participants, the date and year of data collection(Lines1-3). We have added an analysis method for thermal comfort in Section 2.4.
Point 2: Regarding the introduction, I think it contains so much redundant information. Please summarize paragraph 1-3 and please clearly indicate exiting problems. What are the problems if elderly group's perceived thermal sensation, thermal preference, and their adaptive behavior of the elderly are not considered. It would be more convincing it authors could provide the data confirming the existing problem such as an increase in the number of the old people who experience illness due to bad whether.
Response 2: We agree with the reviewer's opinion. After inspection, we deleted unnecessary content in paragraphs 1-3 of the introduction, and pointed out the problems existing in the mutual-aid building for the elderly at this stage. The necessity of considering adaptive thermal comfort, thermal sensation and thermal preference of the elderly is emphasized(Lines65-78). And add references 49 and 50.
Point 3: In the introduction, please clearly explain the meaning of thermal sensation, thermal preference, and adaptive behavior of the elderly.
Response 2: We agree with the reviewer's opinion. We have added the meaning of thermal sensation, thermal preference, and adaptive behavior to the introduction(Lines59-64). And add references 48.
Point 4: In the table 1, The full term of TSV, TPV, and TCV should be indicated. They were mentioned for the first time.
Response 4: As per the reviewer’s suggestion, We have added a note below Table 1 describing the full term of TSV, TPV and TCV(Lines178).
Point 5: Please present types of questions used for measuring thermal sensation, thermal preference, and adaptive behavior, and please explain how the questionnaire was developed. They were adapted from other studies or were created by authors.
Response 5: As per the reviewer’s suggestion, we have revised the related content. Added relevant information to Section 2.2 and described the information about the questionnaire(Lines161-170).
Point 6: Did this study get approval from research ethic committee. please provide the number of approval.
Response 6: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Inner Mongolia University of Technology, and ethical documentation was provided to the editor earlier.
We thank you again for your supportive review and for assisting us in improving our manuscript.
Sincerely,
The Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
This study conducted the questionnaires and field measurements to investigate the TCV, TSV for the elderly living in rural mutual aid homes. This study provided that useful design and construct suggestions for mutual aid homes. From the viewpoint of the reviewer, this study did give some suggestive guideline in winter heating season. Through checking the whole content, the current has a relatively good writing, sufficient data analysis, some real sites pictures, however, some concerns have to be addressed mainly focusing on the measurement details, test process, and some minor comments.
(1) When did the questionnaire survey happen? The total 216 elderly people were interviewed, the date and time distribution of those samples should be mentioned. Different date may affect the survey results. October 1 to April 28 is not test period the reviewer think.
(2) For the test details, what the resolution and range of those devices should be introduced.
(3) How did the survey look like? It is necessary to provide more info.
(4) The inconsistent and incorrect unit of centigrade should be checked. Also some other units.
(5) The table 5 should be replaced with a box chart plotting. The table did not give sufficient info.
(6) Figure 4(a) has an inferior performance, which should be redrawn. Also the figure 7, seems it is too wired.
(7) What are the r2 for expressions in the equation (2)? Also some other equations.
(8) Some language issue, grammar issue, should be revised, e.g., inconsistent capital number, in table 5.
(9) If the r2 equals to 0.08769, that means nothing, meaningless for equation (4). The authors should double check the data and method, otherwise, this model cannot be published!
(10) As an interesting topic, the important concerns have to be considered regarding the region limitation, adaptive thermal comfort, therefore, necessary description and citations should be done. A discussion section is required to figure out this issue.
(11) Last but not the least, what is the novelty of this article? This point should be mentioned somewhere, especially in the abstract section and introduction section.
Author Response
We appreciate your suggestions regarding our paper, and we have responded to your comments below.
Point 1: When did the questionnaire survey happen? The total 216 elderly people were interviewed, the date and time distribution of those samples should be mentioned. Different date may affect the survey results. October 1 to April 28 is not test period the reviewer think.
Response 1: We agree with the reviewer's opinion that the different questionnaire times may have an impact on the results. The thermal environment measurement and questionnaire were conducted simultaneously from December 15 to 31, 2020. This time period has typical winter climate characteristics in central Inner Mongolia and is representative. Fewer elderly people go out during this time, and a larger number of samples can be collected. In abstract, we describe the survey time and survey objects and other related information(Lines1-3).
Point 2: For the test details, what the resolution and range of those devices should be introduced.
Response 2: We agree with the reviewer's opinion. We added the test range and accuracy of each test instrument in Table 3.
Point 3: How did the survey look like? It is necessary to provide more info.
Response 3: As per the reviewer’s suggestion, we have added the related content. In Chapter 2.2 , we describe the survey time and survey objects and other related information. (Lines161-170)
Point 4: The inconsistent and incorrect unit of centigrade should be checked. Also some other units.
Response 4: Thanks to the reviewer for the reminder, after checking the whole article, the unit names such as degrees Celsius have been unified.
Point 5: The table 5 should be replaced with a box chart plotting. The table did not give sufficient info.
Response 5: Table 5 has now been changed to a box plot (figure 5) as suggested by the reviewers.
Point 6: Figure 4(a) has an inferior performance, which should be redrawn. Also the figure 7, seems it is too wired.
Response 6: As per the reviewer’s suggestion, we have modified Figure 4(a) and Figure 7 to make the picture more clearly express what we want to express.
Point 7: What are the r2 for expressions in the equation (2)? Also some other equations.
Response 7: By checking the full text, R2 was added to all thermal comfort models in the article.
Point 8: Some language issue, grammar issue, should be revised, e.g., inconsistent capital number, in table 5.
Response 8: We have carefully checked the relevant information and made corrections to grammar, capitalization and other issues.
Point 9: If the r2 equals to 0.08769, that means nothing, meaningless for equation (4). The authors should double check the data and method, otherwise, this model cannot be published!
Response 9: After inspection, it was found that r2 was not 0.08769 but 0.8769. This is a writing error that should not have occurred. I am so sorry.
Point 10: As an interesting topic, the important concerns have to be considered regarding the region limitation, adaptive thermal comfort, therefore, necessary description and citations should be done. A discussion section is required to figure out this issue.
Response 10: We agree with the reviewer's opinion. We added Chapter 4.2 to the discussion part to discuss the adaptive thermal comfort behavior of the elderly in rural areas in Inner Mongolia and related researches on adaptive thermal comfort, emphasizing the help of adaptive thermal comfort behavior to the health of the elderly(Lines512-537). And add citations 51 and 52.
Point 11: Last but not the least, what is the novelty of this article? This point should be mentioned somewhere, especially in the abstract section and introduction section.
Response 11: We agree with the reviewer's opinion. The innovation of this paper lies in the innovation of research objects and regional scope. Before this, no scholars have been found to conduct thermal comfort and thermal environment research on mutual-aid buildings for the elderly. And there is no research on adaptive thermal comfort of the elderly in central Inner Mongolia. This paper studies the adaptive thermal comfort of the elderly living in the mutual-aid building, and discusses the thermal comfort of the elderly in different age groups. The purpose is to provide more targeted recommendations by analyzing the thermal comfort needs of the elderly at different ages. We have added the relevant description in the Introduction section(Lines112-120).
We thank you again for your supportive review and for assisting us in improving our manuscript.
Sincerely,
The Authors
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The current manuscript can be accepted after a significant revision.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
