School-to-Work Transitions under Unequal Conditions: A Regionalised Perspective on the ‘Discouraged Worker’ Hypothesis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript presents excellent research. I do, however, feel the content needs rearranging and shortening. Ideally, an academic paper should take between 15 and 30 minutes to read by a reader who has no knowledge of the subject. Taking me over an hour to read, there’s too much extrapolating and not enough clarity. Consider for example, lines 78 to 84. This belongs to the conclusion as stated. Another example is lines 88 to 93 starting with “The two lower…” This extraneous information makes reading cumbersome for an unfamiliar reader. The obvious needs to be stated succinctly and presented as a logical stream of information.

Please do not let this discourage you. There is no questioning the value or rigor of your research. I have notified the editors that it’s possible the journal presents research differently to what I’m used to – Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. For example, your manuscript presented hypotheses in the Introduction, which should be in the Method section. That said, I may not be a suitable reviewer for this manuscript. I’ll let them decide what to do. Meanwhile, all the best.  

Author Response

Reply Review 1 : We would like to thank the reviewers for the helpful, constructive, and very encouraging feedback on our manuscript.

We agree with the reviewer that the manuscript needed to be clearer and more concise. Among others we shortened and rewrote the paragraphs mentioned by the reviewer: We removed the lines 78-84 and we do no longer provide a preview on the findings in the introduction. Also, we rewrote lines 88-93 to make clearer the institutional background characteristics relevant to our analyses.

However, we believe that there is a difference in the presentation of research outlined by the reviewer and how we aim to present our research. We structured our paper in –Introduction, Institutional background, Theory and prior research, Data and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion. We acknowledge that there are differences across disciplines but coming from the field of sociology, we believe that a thorough discussion of a theoretical framework—in our case based on the discouraged worker effect and the corresponding literature—is relevant for our cause.

Moreover, we placed the section on the institutional background of the German school and VET system not at the data section but right after the introduction because we believe that this makes it easier to follow the particular arguments and hypotheses that we formulate in the theory section. Also, it makes it easier to understand the specific data collection and the structure of the data.

Overall, we hope that by shortening and streamlining the paper we satisfy the reviewer’s requests.  

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper provides a very solid empirical evidence on the hypothesis that the higher levels of unemployment lead to the prolonged education. The empirical research has been done for the case of Germany. The paper would benefit from examining some international evidence, especially in a new discussion section, where the German empirical data could be put in the European context. This section should be introduced after the results, and before the summary/conclusion. For instance, it would be very interesting to see, how your results compare to the well-known 'Matthew Effect' in life-long education, stating that the life-long education often benefits those, with the priviliged socio-economic backgrounds (see, e.g. Kosyakova, Y., & Bills, D. B. (2021). Formal adult education and socioeconomic inequality: Second chances or Matthew Effects?. Sociology Compass, 15(9), e12920.)

Author Response

 

Reply Review 2: We would like to thank the reviewers for the helpful, constructive, and very encouraging feedback on our manuscript.

We added (national and international) references in a new discussion section following our results and we relate our findings more clearly to prior research.

In the paper we are less concerned with the relevance of regional conditions for specific social groups (e.g. social background) but with structural feature of the education and training system (attended school track, availability of Gesamtschule and VET places). Therefore, we cannot say too much about cumulative social disadvantages in education and training. Yet, more indirectly we can argue that prior research has shown frequently that students from less privileged social backgrounds are more likely to be in the lower tracks and we add to this that students in these lower tracks are particularly disadvantaged when regional labour and training market conditions are scarce.

 

On effect heterogeneities for social background groups there are some studies that confirm exactly what the reviewer states; poor regional conditions are in particular relevant/detrimental for young adults’ aspirations and transitions when they are from a lower social background:

Rice, P. (1999). The impact of local labour markets on investment in further education: Evidence from the England and Wales youth cohort studies. Journal of Population Economics, 12(2), 287–312. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001480050100

Weßling, Katarina (2023). Does the Region Make a Difference? Social Inequality in Transitions to Adulthood across Cohorts in West Germany. Social Sciences 12(5), 303; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12050303;

Hartung, Andreas, Weßling, Katarina & Steffen Hillmert (2022). Interplay between family background and labour-market conditions in shaping students’ occupational status expectations. Journal of Education and Work. https://doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2022.2073338

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

While containing excellent findings and an important research contribution, this paper does not meet publication standards.    There appears to be minor changes when the improvised structure and extraneous words are serious issues. For examples, Section 3 'Regional availability of VET opportunities' should be in the Introduction. The research question should also be at the end of the Introduction. Moreover, hypotheses need to be stated in a Method section - which is not present. This disorganisation is the main reason for my decision.    There are also mistakes related to English usage such as grammar and incorrect use of brackets, which don't meet the standard required for academic publication. See, for instance, line 30 "... research on (regional) context effects ..." There are many other examples.   Lastly, I have a double major and Honors in Sociology. The justification for the improvised structure and excessive words is thus unfounded.    Again, please do not let this discourage you. I sense a professional editor may resolve the issues I mentioned. The content is there, but the manuscript needs a restructuring and the writing truncated to assist flow.        

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for his/her suggestions and comments on the paper. We have tried to address them accordingly.

In particular, we have had the paper checked by professional academic proofreading and have implemented the suggested changes. Moreover, we have used the opportunity to shorten the paper in order to make it even more comprehensible.  To increase the clarity of the paper’s structure, we have amended the wording of a number of section (sub-)headings.