Urban Informal Food Traders: A Rapid Qualitative Study of COVID-19 Lockdown Measures in South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I am sorry to say that I do not see a radical improvement compared to the previously submitted version. I still insist that extremely small arrays commonly result in substantial distortions and misinterpretations. The study is built on twelve interviews. Quantitative measurement of responses is still missing. Therefore, it is not possible to compare the results.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors:

• I am sorry to say that I do not see a radical improvement compared to the previously submitted version. I still insist that extremely small arrays commonly result in substantial distortions and misinterpretations. The study is built on twelve interviews. Quantitative measurement of responses is still missing. Therefore, it is not possible to compare the results.

 

Kindly see responses to comments and suggestions made to the Academic Editor about the justification to address the concern for a small qualitative sample size for our study. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The publication of the paper is justified because the topic is treated in an original and appropriate way thanks to the development of issues related to food traders  through an interesting empirical research. Literature is developed in a clear way and methodology of the empirical research is developed and explained in a  understandable way responding appropriately with the paper objectives. Good presentation of the results, and also the conclusions are understandable.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for their thoughtful comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

This is a well done study on how Covid-19 lockdown measures have impacted informal trade, specific to South Africa territory. Please have in mind several changes that should be done in your manuscript, for improving its quality and overall presentation.

There are several misspelled words throughout the manuscript (eg line 31, activity, line 92 substenitally.. etc)

Several phrases do not make any sense, lacking the verb or the action (eg. line 120-121; line 105-107, etc) .

Line 200-202, rephrase the text and remove the initials. Simply explain the method.

Please explain your choice on quoting the respondents comments  to the survey. This is rather journalistic style. My recommendation is to remove quotation and at most include this part in the supplementary file.

References need to be adapted to Mdpi style.

Best regards

 

 

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors:

Dear Authors, This is a well done study on how Covid-19 lockdown measures have impacted informal trade, specific to South Africa territory. Please have in mind several changes that should be done in your manuscript, for improving its quality and overall presentation.

 

We would like to thank the reviewer for their insightful comments and suggestions. We describe how and where we have made the suggested changes for each point below. Including making a list of other changes section as the end (see Other Changes)

 

• There are several misspelled words throughout the manuscript (eg line 31, activity, line 92 substenitally.. etc)

 

Introduction Section, Page 1, Line 31

Corrected the misspelling of activity

 

Introduction Section, Page 3, Line 92

Corrected the misspelling of substantially

 

• Several phrases do not make any sense, lacking the verb or the action (eg. line 120-121; line 105-107, etc).

 

Introduction Section, Page 3, Lines 105-108: restructured the sentence to read as follows:

These disruptions to the informal food sector were severe. Particularly, their implications on vulnerable populations, unprecedented nature and far-reaching impact on informal food trading.

 

Introduction Section, Page 4, Lines 120-124: sentences restructured to read as follows:

 

Yet, it is important to document such perceptions in preparation for similar future policy emergency mitigation responses [41]. Particularly, these understandings may help inform considerations of vulnerable populations such as informal traders to reduce severe consequences on urban food security in future pandemics [12, 13, 39, 47].

 

• Line 200-202, rephrase the text and remove the initials. Simply explain the method.

 

Data Processing and Analysis Section, Page 6, Lines 211-219

The methods conducted have been described without the initials of the researchers who did the work as described below:

Transcripts were reviewed and initial draft coding conducted. The emerging codes informed development of an analytic codebook, which was refined by the researchers. Three of the research team members coded the transcripts using the final codebook that was organized into twelve coding families and 72 codes. The three compared and discussed their individual and collaborative coding, and any differences in coding were resolved through regular meetings. The coding process was followed by data extraction and analysis of findings. Relevant codes were identified and categorized into three major themes:

 

• Please explain your choice on quoting the respondents comments to the survey. This is rather journalistic style. My recommendation is to remove quotation and at most include this part in the supplementary file.

 

In qualitative reporting, presenting participants’ verbatim quotations of what they have uttered during the study is considered a “gold standard”. Therefore, qualitative studies are often accompanied by direct quotes from research participants or data sources to illustrate the data that emerged. Kindly see the statement that justifies why we have chosen to do so, under the following:

 

Methods Section, Page 6, Lines 223-225

Quotes from participants are used to illustrate these themes [58].

 

• References need to be adapted to Mdpi style.

 

The reference style has been change to reflect the MDPI style as recommended, References section, Pages, 21-24, Lines 744-876. Kindly, also see Reference section below.

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.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

There are minor English language and formatting changes required. please get it proof read once more. 

there is no literature review done for this article. please include literature review section for the reader especially tell the reader about the work done on informal food systems, sustainability, food security. please also include other closely related framworks and do a commentary why you have chosen this particular conceptual framework? it could be better if you can create your own conceptual framework based on the literature review. 

 

please send the interview protocol with your revision. Also please send me the analysis tables.

 

thank you 

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper addresses the very relevant issue of ensuring food security in urban areas through informal food trade. Despite its relevance, I consider the current study immature from a methodological point of view. The methodological background is not elaborated, the approach is not discussed through the lens of previous studies. The study itself is based on the results of interviews of twelve people - hardly a representative array. It is not clear, which questions were asked and how the answers were measured and compared. A kind of scale must be established to rate answers to make them comparable.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have written an intriguing opening paragraph for the introduction section. However, problem statement remains weak. The authors should strengthen the problem statement by defining the problem being addressed in a way that is clear and concise. In describing, please add more information to show the difference between your work and other authors work. There is also no theory found written in this section to support the authors research idea. In particular, literature more complete about definition of food safety and it's problems, about inadequate labour conditions.
I suggest to insert in the intro paragraph and in conceptual framework paragraph, some works about this topics, among line 46/52 of the paper 
among line 77/90 of the paper
For example:

- Scarpato, D., Rotondo, G., Simeone, M., Gómez, A., & Gutiérrez, P. (2017). How can food companies attract the consumer concerned about food safety? A logit model analysis in Spain. British Food Journal.

- Civero, G., Rusciano, V., & Scarpato, D. (2018). Orientation of Agri-food companies to CSR and consumer perception: A survey on two Italian companies. Recent patents on food, nutrition & agriculture, 9(2), 134-141.

- Simeone, M., Scarpato, D., & Marinelli, N. (2016). Factors affecting food label complexity: Does the new EU regulation satisfy consumer issues? An exploratory study. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 22(5), 571-583.