Job Insecurity and Work Meaning among Romanian Sports Coaches

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read this paper with great interest. The topic is timely and the study is well conducted. Still, I have several remarks that should be addressed before publication of this piece is warranted.

First, some references are needed to back up the claims in the intro.

Second, adding anchors of each scale in Table 1 will make it easier to interpret the mean scores and standard deviations.

Statements such as “levels of qualitative job insecurity than quantitative job insecurity” should be statistically tested.

I am not a native English speaker, but I think the paper would benefit from proofreading. I noticed quite a few mistakes (e.g., on page 8, first row, analyzes should be analyses; alternatively should be respectively, …).

Technically, what is happening in the first set of analyses, is that the total effect of difficulties on the three outcomes is mediated by (qualitative) job insecurity. Moreover, it would be better to test the model including all outcomes at once.

The same goes for the moderation analyses: standardized beta’s should be reported, and the interaction effects can be tested in one all-inclusive model. As such, I suggest the authors run a moderated mediation model using SEM where they include one predictor (difficulties), two mediators (qualitative and quantitative job insecurity), one moderator (work meaning), and three outcomes (depression, stress, and anxiety).

The slope analyses are not explained correctly. A moderation effect cannot disappear, but a significant association between insecurity and depression, for instance, can. In the same vein, the fourth row of Tables 6 - 11 are redundant, as they provide the same info as the first line. For Table 10, please also report the slope effects, even though they is no significant interaction effect, there could be a similar pattern with reduced (or even not significant) effects among those perceiving high work meaning.

Also in the discussion section, the results are misinterpreted. The sentence” At high levels of work meaning, the relationship between job insecurity and depression does not change” is incorrect, at those high levels, the relationship is not significant, so meaning acts like a buffer.

The authors regularly claim that there are very few studies on their topic, but immediately after, they refer to a meta-analysis. What is the exact novelty in their work, beyond applying an existing framework to the current pandemic?

Finally, please avoid causal language (e.g., causes, leads to, …).

Author Response

Dear sir/madam,

Thank you very much for your review and for the pertinent observations that led us to improve the quality of the manuscript.
Please see the attachment with the revised manuscript.

All the best,

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find attached a document detailing the considerations.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear sir/madam,

Thank you very much for your review and for the pertinent observations that led us to improve the quality of the manuscript.
Please see the attachment with the revised manuscript.

All the best,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

INTRODUCTION

It seems clear and  complete.

The header “MATERIALS AND METHOD”, seems that the content related still continues to be part of the introduction.

 

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

Line 147, it is enough to mention one gender (men or female)

I suggest to include validity and reliability data reported in previous studies of each of the scales included.

 

RESULTS

Line 255. “HYPOTHESES TESTIN”. In my opinion, it is not necessary to repeat the hypotheses, they can be mention again in a shorter way.

Graphics about the main results may be attached.

 

DISCUSSION

I suggest to start the discussion with the main objective of the study.

 

CONCLUSION

I suggest here to highlight the main findings of the study. Specify novelties that have not been previously reported.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Dear sir/madam,

Thank you very much for your review and for the pertinent observations that led us to improve the quality of the manuscript.
Please see the attachment with the revised manuscript.

All the best,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I  appreciate the efforts of the authors to incorporate my suggestions, but most of my comments were not addressed properly.

1. Providing the means of levels of qualitative job insecurity than quantitative job insecurity does not show that they are statistically different from one another. A t-test is needed.
2. There are still many language errors throughout the manuscript.
3. A moderated mediation model using SEM should be tested with one predictor (difficulties), two mediators (qualitative and quantitative job insecurity), one moderator (work meaning), and three outcomes (depression, stress, and anxiety) simultaneously.

These are just a few examples. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this article just doesn't meet the scientific standards warranting publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for all the useful recommendations. We furthermore appreciate your evaluation. Without exception, all comments and suggestions helped to improve the quality of the manuscript.  Please find the details below.

• We performed a moderated mediation through structural equation modeling using AMOS.23. This approach suggested by you has substantially changed the manuscript.
• Material difficulties were used as a predictor, qualitative and quantitative job insecurity were used as mediators, work meaning was used as a moderator for job insecurity – mental health path, and depression, anxiety, stress were used as dependent variables. We used standardized values for each variable in the equation and computed the interaction terms for moderation (JICAL_WS for the interaction between qualitative job insecurity and work meaning; JICAN_WS for the interaction between quantitative job insecurity and work meaning).
• We corrected the language errors in the manuscript.

All the best,

Germina & the team

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for incorporating my suggestions.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for your support. We made the request changes.

To the descriptive analysis, we added skewness and kurtosis for the measured variables. We modified Table 1 by correcting the abbreviations of the variable names.

Under Table 7 and in the Limitations subchapter we added a comment on the measurement errors.

Also, the text was revised by a native English speaker.

All the best,

Germina&the team

Author Response File: Author Response.docx