Is Virtual Communication Possible in Intergenerational Programs? The SIMUL Project

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Please see the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Many thanks to the reviewers and the journal editor. We appreciate all the suggested changes. We consider that our article includes the suggested changes.
We include a letter with the justifications for the changes made. The response to the comments is marked in blue in the document. In the manuscript, you can see in blue color the changes made. The document has been reviewed by MDPI's English editing service. Please find attached a certificate of the edition of the manuscript.
Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

This study raises interesting issues that call for urgent attention for planning and managing them in the near future, at both individual and institutional levels. Discussion with limitations are promising for future research directions. Some areas to be expanded to make this manuscript more complete are:

1. Rationale – what are the background of the specific problems encountered by people of different generations in that society? Some relevant issues should be described to make the problems of intergenerational communication clearly stand out. For example, some communities/societies are less collectivists, making people have less chance to interact across different generations (e.g., extended/single family, interdependent/independent values). As this program was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, are there other contexts that the program can be used to further support the intergenerational community?

 

 2.      Academic style – theoretical framework is not presented. Explaining one would provide the study a theoretical base/perspective (e.g., communication, aging, psychology). Research questions/hypotheses are not clearly stated. Research method, such as reliability of measures and data analysis, needs to be expanded in more details. Also, Tables 2 and 3 are from previous studies as cited or the findings of the current one? 

 

3. References – Many of them may be less applicable to international readers for further reading.

 

Author Response

Many thanks to the reviewers and the journal editor. We appreciate all the suggested changes. We consider that our article includes the suggested changes.
We include a letter with the justifications for the changes made. The response to the comments is marked in blue in the document. In the manuscript, you can see in blue color the changes made. The document has been reviewed by MDPI's English editing service. Please find attached a certificate of the edition of the manuscript.
Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Efforts have been made to improve the paper to adapt it to the journal and the academic style, I appreciate the efforts. Just a couple of things.

Regarding the references, I forgot to include the full references, I was referring to: 

González-Anta, B., Orengo, V., Zornoza, A., Gamero, N., & Peñarroja, V. (2020). Collaboration and performance in virtual teams with faultlines: an emotional management intervention. Revista Psicologia Organizações e Trabalho, 20(4), 1237-1246.

Oeppen, R. S., Shaw, G., & Brennan, P. A. (2020). Human factors recognition at virtual meetings and video conferencing: how to get the best performance from yourself and others. British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 58(6), 643-646.

Yet these were just some examples I got from a fast search, I see you have considered interesting articles too.

Finally, I don't know the criteria of the journal for the use of blue, but I am confused for example why Lee et al., the citation is in blue, then in the refs section isn't, and other articles are. Please check this just in case. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the editor for the suggested changes. We have introduced all the suggestions and proposed changes. The document introduces the changes in the change control format. 
We hope it is now correct for your publications.
If you need the clean version please let us know to send it.
Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Although the authors made changes based on some commnents, hypotheses were not clearly stated. Relaibility of measures and data anlysis was not presented (e.g., reliabilities of the items/scales, method of data analysis, reliability of content analysis). Overall, it does not clearly show how the findings add on to existing knowledge and theoretical concepts, making the manuscript limited to the contribution to the field.

Author Response

We would like to thank the editor for the suggested changes. We have introduced all the suggestions and proposed changes. The document introduces the changes in the change control format. 
We hope it is now correct for your publications.
If you need the clean version please let us know to send it.
Best regards

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

Dear Authors,

thanks you for giving me the opportunity to review your article  and to learn about the SIMUL project. However, I am missing quite a bit of detail to fully appreciate your work and research. I also appreciate that delivering this course (the intergenerational education) in the context of the COVID pandemic must have been challenging, so the article needs to do both present the circumstances and then the outcomes. 

Points to consider:

who (and how old) were young people 

who and how old were the older adults,  

NOTE: in Gerontology we would not use the term Elderly as it's derogative

what was the ApS project?

I understand the SIMUL monitors directed / facilitated each group - considering you have an international audience - could you describe what the function of the monitors were... were these educators or more observers (it's not quite clear to me at the moment)

For the evaluation part did you seek ethical approval? 

can you be more specific about whom you talked to (both participant groups of the 3 centres i.e. young and old), how did you analyse them? Interviews, how many people did you interview and how did you analyse the transcript?

Your Research question: is it possible to develop an intergenerational project through virtual meetings?

I’m not keen on this research question as we can simply answer yes or no to it. Considering your aims I think the question should be : what are the socio-educational experiences gained during the SIMUL Intergenerational Project (academic year 2020-21) by young and older participants?

But then again I did not get a good idea from your results sections what the experiences by the individual participants were. 

You further need to bring out your contributions more clearly, what can other researchers / educators learn from you that they have not known before? I think the point of your project around the shared motivational project sounds very interesting and I would be keen to know what type of projects the generations have chosen. 

A useful way to bring out your contributions is by comparing your project with other projects Of "intergenerational programming" or intergenerational engagement" or "intergenerational practice" and look for similarities / differences.   

Some of these references might be helpful 

Lee, K., Jarrott, S. E., & Juckett, L. A. (2020). Documented outcomes for older adults in intergenerational programming: A scoping review. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 18(2), 113-138.

Marx, M. S., Cohen-Mansfield, J., Renaudat, K., Libin, A., & Thein, K. (2005). Technology-mediated versus face-to-face intergenerational programming. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 3(3), 101-118.

Kirsnan, L., Kosiol, J., Golenko, X., Radford, K., & Fitzgerald, J. A. (2022). Barriers and Enablers for Enhancing Engagement of Older People in Intergenerational Programs in Australia. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 1-20.

Reviewer 2 Report

The present article suffers from weaknesses both from a theoretical and a methodological point of view.

To highlight only the important points: the content of the project to be implemented is poorly documented and little information is known about the participants.

A more consistent theoretical approach about virtual communication and its particularities is missing.

The results are not very strong and concern almost only a satisfaction questionnaire, with very little information about the other aspects.

The article gives advice on the future implementation of virtual intergenerational actions, but it is not clear why this guidance is offered, as it is based on the authors' direct observations and not on their own findings.

The conclusion is that virtual intergenerational projects should be avoided in favour of real life projects, but there is no real comparative measure.