Knowledge in Regard to Environmental Problems among University Students in Cali, Colombia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Deleted.

2. Please state sample size and year of study in the abstract.

3. Please state the sampling method in abstract.

4. Please place keywords in alphabetical order.

INTRODUCTION

5. Concerning reference 1, to the best of my knowledge, references do not use ISBN numbers. What language is the study in? Please provide a link to the document. Use a URL shortening tool such as tinyurl.com for non-DOI links.

6. Most Tier 1 journals require digital object identifiers (DOIs) for each reference if available. I can find none in this paper. Therefore, go to crossref.org and provide a DOI for each reference.

7. learning [2], It must - a capital I is not correct after a comma.

8. However, there is evidence of a growing concern among the population, including 43 students, especially young university students. - What is the subject of this sentence?

9. Most of them - What is "them"?

10. To the best of my knowledge, humans do not affect climate change (this is long term and greatly affected by the sun and the earth's orbit and tilt). However, some studies say humans are a contributor to global warming which is debatable. 

11. Reference 16 is not a complete sentence. By whom? 

12. Please note in the references which studies are not in the English language. Normally this is done by placing (in Spanish) at the end of the reference. Sustainability is an English language journal. 

13. actitud - This is a Spanish word i believe. Does it mean "attitude"?

14. Look at the paragraphs starting at line 69. They are too long and contain more than 1 subject. Please adjust.

15. Section 2.2 is very informative, However, why is the study so old (2017)? A paper that is five years old raises issues.

16. In paragraph starting line 136, place the number of questionnaire items after each section.

17. Table 1-I see the authors wish to use the term "climate change". Therefore, please provide a paragraph with citations detailing what the authors interpret it to mean. There needs to be clarification on what the study is investigating. Is it climate change or global warming? They are not the same.

18. Section 2.3-Are there really 12 year olds studying at the university?

19. I am confused. The study sampled 268 "students" but the authors are stating that the age range for these "students" is 12-64. Please clarify.

20. R-3.6.1 statistical software (Team, RC, 2020). - Is this a citation?

21. In Table 3, the age group data is confusing. How old are the 60 "students" in the "adult" group? In Line 157 the authors imply that these 60 students are between 25-64 years of age. Is this correct?

22. Line 197 : According to the identification of environmental problems, 94.4% of the students evidenced their identification - I do not understand what this says.

23. Line 204:  Considering the students who identified environmental problems, 70% indicated that these are highly important, 27.3% medium level of importance, and 2.8% that these 205 have low significance. - What is "these"? 

24. Starting in Lin 204 and continuing through the 2 figures labeled as Figure 1, I am confused as to who is being reported on. Where is "70%" in the Figure 1 graphs? Where is the "27.3%"? Is this data for this study's 268 "students"?

25. Starting in Line 211, I see numerous data being reported. Is this data visualized in Figure 1 or is this new data? 

26. Starting on Line 225, the authors once again report data but I cannot find this data in the tables or figures. Where is the data coming from? Sample: "Women affirmed that air 226 pollution (37.7%) was the most important priority problem to solve."

27.The same problem is also happening in Section 3.3. None of the data being reported is elsewhere in the study. Table 4 seems to report the same data but the numbers are different. Also the variables in the text are not the same as Table 4. The following is NOT in Table 4: "water use efficiency (82.4%), electrical energy use (72.3%)". Is this data coming from this study or an outside study?

28. In the revision I highly suggest you label your variables, such as x1, x2, etc. Create a master table with the English names for each and the labels. 

28. Line 253: Thus, women indicated that the 252 main actions to solve environmental problems were solid waste management (44.9%), tree  plantation (28%) and water saving (23.4%). For men, tree plantation was the main action (26.6%), while solid waste management and water saving represented 25.3% and 20.3%, 255 respectively. - Where is this data and variable descriptions in the previous text? It is not in Table 4 for sure. Are the authors using other terms such as "biodiversity loss" and "water pollution" ? Clarification needs to be given and consistency maintained in the reporting. Also, Appendix A needs to match the tables and text. 

Appendix A:

____Noise pollution 562

____Climate change 563

____Poor waste management 564

____Biodiversity loss 565

____Air pollution 566

____Water pollution 567

____Soil pollution 568

____Visual pollution 569

____Low implementation of renewable energies 570

____Inefficient public transportation system 571

 

____Lack of environmental training or knowledge

29. Line 363 : In Colombia, some studies conducted on knowledge or perception of environmental problems by university students show that 364 water pollution is recognized as the most relevant problem (79.3 %), followed by solid 365 waste management (65%) and air pollution (57.3%) [44, 45]. - Please identify which statistic comes from which study. The way it is written suggests that both studies reported exactly the same data which is not normally possible.

30. I am very curious how the authors came to this conclusion from the study cited as [56]? "EP high percentage considers that these problems are extremely important (70% of 381 the students) although this is mostly in the case of adolescents because they have a greater inclination toward environmental topics than older people [56]." - I went to the study cited and after a review saw that "The research followed a multi-method approach, using reports completed by 11-to 14-year-old school pupils and collected in three periods: 1974–1977; 1978–1980; 2007–2009." -Therefore, my question to the authors is "if the study interviewed 11-14 year olds, how can the authors know that older people care less about the environment?" How did this study's authors come to this conclusion?

31. Line 385: which proves that they are aware of the adverse environmental effects that are a reality and they consider them as problems resulting from human activities [17]. - This statement is not factually correct and the citation comes from a study that was not peer reviewed. I suggest the removal of the sentence and reference.

32. I also suggest a paragraph somewhere describing what is meant by "visual pollution" along with 2-3 references which are no older than 5 years about what VP is. An excellent resource to do this is Google Scholar. Click on research since 2019 and type in "visual pollution".

 

Difficult at times. Clarity of what is being referred to is needed. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. The manuscript was corrected according your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very salient topic and I'm glad that the authors are addressing this issue.  That being said, revisions are needed. Some are in the use of language (some are detailed below). The other issues are about better describing the survey itself when describing the responses. Although the survey itself is presented at the end, it would be helpful in understanding the survey if its parts were described or presented in chunks as the data is presented or discussed.

Abstract sentence beginning “To assess our aim,…” should be rewritten. I recommend “To gather data, a survey that included sociodemographic information, aspects of environmental knowledge, actions aimed at mitigating environmental problems, and environmental awareness was administered (to students?) at USC.” I do have a question about what the difference is between aspects of environmental knowledge and environmental awareness. It appears that the second one is specific to local campaigns which is different from general environmental awareness. Could this sentence just include the last term in place of both the knowledge and awareness? What follows is a more complete description of the individual topics. The next sentence begins with “I the same sense,” which can be deleted. The last sentence of the abstract is actually 2-3 sentences – the authors are encouraged to break up the conclusions statement into multiple sentences.

 The sentence after [3]. in the first Introduction paragraph does not make sense. Is it the approach or the education or ? or awareness that depends on academic background?

 

 Line 43: a growing concern about what?

 

 Line 50 – what development is referred to here? Societal? Emotional? Economic?

 

 Introduction – language needs to be revised to clarify authors intended meaning (as well as the abstract)

 

 For the identification of environmental problems how were these presented – the respondents just clicked on yes or no for each category? Was this open ended or a list to choose from? How was this question posed to the respondents?

 

 Although the authors indicate that the survey is included, brief descriptions are needed for each topic analyzed (type of question, number of questions, how the data was analyzed…)

 

 In the discussion about solving problems – was this awareness of how to do this or that they individually did this? That this was done by the university?  More detailed descriptions of what was probed is needed. Again, although the survey is presented at the end of the manuscript, a discussion of the way in which the questions were asked is warranted at the beginning of the discussion of each portion of the results or the data.

 

 Line 363 – where were the other studies done? Are the differences in results specific to the areas in which they were carried out?

 

It was difficult to follow some of the parts of this manuscript - especially the introduction due to the words used/language construction. Please consult with a native English speaker or an English editor/instructor.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. The manuscript was corrected according your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Human being's awareness on environmental protection and deep understanding about the future demand for a better live via innovation and technology development is of highly importance, especially for a sustainable future.

The significance of this study is appreciated, but its working/research manner seems to be a market survey for students, with a potential to give clear guidance for education.

I would like to add one more comment to authors to make a comparison between Columbia and other continent or other universities so as to have a full picture about the study, and will give better awareness to the global readers. 

 

Simple and concise English without redundancy is preferred. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. The manuscript was corrected according your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors are commended for their revision. This version is much easier to understand.

This version is much better. There are still a few typos and irregular language, but overall, this manuscript is ready for publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

The revised manuscript meets the basic criteria for publication. 

Minor polishing to minimize any misunderstanding