Flourishing through Prayer by Singing in a Liturgical Choir

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A very interesting, interdisciplinary article. More often than not, the impact of church music on its audiences is addressed; in this case, its creators and performers were examined. 

The structure of the article is logical and consistent, the conclusions correspond to the research and the different parts are correctly linked. The authors mention the need for a more holistic analysis of the research results, possibly extending them, which seems like a very good idea for a monograph. 

However, there are minor shortcomings in the article:

- l. 126 - there is a gradation in Church teaching, hence the correct order is: documents by popes, councils, synods and bishops;

- l. 260 - when referring to Van der Veele, his name was unnecessarily repeated in brackets;

- l. 595 - the way the Roman Missal is described bibliographically is different from the documents of the Church. Why?

- l. 614-615 - an error in the description of the pages;

- l. 616 - no pages in the description;

The above errors, although not affecting the high level of the text, call for a solid review of the text as a whole, with particular attention to the footnotes and bibliography.

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for the time you devoted to reading our manuscript. We are gratefuf for all remarks that you mentioned. We corrected the order of the documents you suggested as well as the sources and their description. Those faults in references were the result of using a bibliographical program but we managed to correct them.

Thank you again for your positive attitude an your help,

Agnieszka Marek

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed article fully addresses the issues contained in the title. It systematically and consistently presents subsequent facts that the author wants to familiarize the reader with. The entire article is substantively correct, with a justified structure and logic. The language of the study is communicative and scientific. The author used literature and his own research. The study deserves publication in the journal "Religions".

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madame,

Thank You for the positive review which gives credit to our work.

Kind regards,

Agnieszka Marek

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is fundamentally flawed insofar as it takes the teachings of the Catholic Church and that institution's interpretation of the Bible as foundational truths. While the authors and study subjects might accept those as truths, it cannot be assumed that readers agree. This is not a journal of or for Catholic readers. The authors, therefore, either need to find a more suitable publication venue or they need to found their argument in the scholarly literature common to the community of readers. In other words, it is appropriate to write about the role of faith in the lives of people, but it is not appropriate to expect the reader to share that faith.

Additional notes:

Section 2 consists of a single 85-line paragraph that was essentially unreadable.

It is not appropriate to use the term "man" to indicate "humankind" in scholarly writing.

I did not understand why each participant's family status was important. Please elaborate. I would also like a citation for the claim that men and women have "different ways of perceiving activity and activity-related processes."

Can you say more about the coding? How many themes were identified? What were they? Can they be presented in a table?

In research of this type, I prefer combining Results with Discussion. It is impossible to report the Results of coded interview data without also conveying interpretation. In this case, observations were split across the Results and Discussion sections, and in the former case they were hard to follow. It would be stronger to consolidate.

I had a hard time drawing connections between the first half of the article (generally constituting literature review) and the second (the study and results). While the Discussion referenced earlier ideas, those ideas had not been laid out in a systematic way.

I am very concerned that this article does not include an IRB Statement. While I am skeptical that the IRB has authority over all social-science research, this most certainly constitutes a study with human subjects and requires advance approval.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The writing throughout needs considerable attention. It contained frequent errors and was often difficult to understand. Several quotes were missing one set of quotation marks.

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madame,

Thank You for the time you devoted to read our manuscript and all your valuable suggestions that let us enrich our manuscript. Let us explain our changes and decision that we made.

• Given that the title of the special issue was “Christian Prayer: Social Sciences Perspective” we decided to choose one of the religious rites, namely Catholicism, to show the coherence between the teaching if the Catholic Church and the practice in liturgical choirs functioning within that Church. We added appropriate statements in the methodological sections. We had no intentions to impose any faith rules but to show the opinions and beliefs of our informants. We hope that you can accept this explanation. At the end of the article we stated that it would be interesting to see how people from others religious rites see the problem. We tried to underline it more and we hope that it won’t be the problem since then.
• We corrected whole section 2 to make it readable
• We had English in our manuscript corrected by a professional. We put special emphasis on not using the term “man” to indicate “humankind”.
• We perceived family status as important because singing in a choir is an extra activity to spend free time. People who established their own family have additional duties in comparison to single people. They often have to share duties connected with bringing up children and have less free time than single people. We specified activities as prayer and leisure activity and added necessary citations.
• We decided to combine all defined codes into 5 themes with two sub-themes. We presented them in the table. Additionally we presented the relations between themes in the model which emerged after data analyses.
• According to your suggestion we reorganised the research result part by combining results with discussion. We decided to reorganise it to maintain the order dictated by the models. We hope that that way of the analysis systematised the results and made them easier to follow
• All the informants were over 18 years old and they consciously agreed on taking part in the research and using their answers in a scientific paper. The research design was approved by the Discyplinary Ethical Committee at our University so we fulfilled all ethical requirements. All details were sent to the Editor.

We are really grateful for all your remarks and hopefully our corrections are enough to accept our manuscript for the publication.

If you had any further questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Yours sincerely,

Agnieszka Marek

Tomasz Lisiecki

 

 

                                                                                                       

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author,

Following a thorough review of your article, I am pleased to offer some constructive suggestions to enhance your manuscript. Your research is undoubtedly a fascinating and relevant topic. Below, I detail some aspects that could enrich your work:

1. Depth in literature review: While the current citations are pertinent, the article could benefit from a more in-depth review of previous studies. It would be advisable to include a broader range of literature that delves more deeply into the effects of choral singing on non-musical aspects, such as community building and identity. Expanding the literature review could provide a richer context and underscore the relevance of your research in the field.

2.  

3. Clarity in research design: I would suggest making the methodological aspects of your study more explicit in the first part of the article or in the abstract. Clearly detailing the research design would contribute to a better understanding of your work by the readers.

4.  

5. Presentation of results: The manner in which the results are presented could be significantly improved. Including frequency tables and graphical representations of the various nodes and their weights based on the informants would add clarity and allow readers to better visualize the findings. Furthermore, data triangulation among different informants would strengthen the validity of your results. More depth is needed in this section.

6.  

7. Use of analytical tools: It would be beneficial to know if any specific software was used for data analysis. The use of specific analytical tools can add credibility and precision to your findings.

8.  

9. Ethical considerations and informed consent: It is crucial to detail how ethical issues were addressed in your study. Was informed consent obtained from the participants before the interviews? How was confidentiality and ethical handling of data ensured? Clarity in these aspects is fundamental to maintaining the ethical standards of the research.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful in strengthening your article. I am convinced that, with these improvements, your research can make a significant contribution to the field of study. I am at your disposal for any further clarification or additional support you may require.

Sincerely,

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madame,

Thank You for the time you devoted to read our manuscript and all your valuable suggestions that let us enrich our manuscript. Let us explain our changes and decision that we made.

• We agree that community building or belonging to a specific group of people is really an important issue. That is why, we are planning to write another article about choir as a community which builds common good so we didn’t include the literature on community building intentionally. In this paper we concentrated more on prayer and spiritual well-being so we decided not to deepen literature on community, social capital or relationships. Please let us know if it is acceptable or you still believe that we should extend mentioned subjects.
• We added some information about the research design in the abstract and clarified them in the methodology section. We hope that it increased the clarity of the research design.
• According to your suggestions we added the table with codes families and the model in which we illustrated the relationships between distinguished themes. We also reorganized all part with research results. We added some parts on differences between the respondents groups although we decided to mention them in parts addressing specific issues and not to add a separated paragraph to stay in the order dictated by the model.
• We tried to use Atlas.ti but it wasn’t as helpful as we wanted it to be so we decided to analyse the transcripts manually. With Polish research and the complexity of Polish grammar those tools are less helpful than in English texts.
• All the informants were over 18 years old and they consciously agreed on taking part in the research and using their answers in a scientific paper. The data is stored in separate folders in my computer and is not shared with external parties. The research design was accepted by the Discyplinary Ethical Committee at our University so we fulfilled all ethical requirements.

We are really grateful for all your remarks and hopefully our corrections are enough to accept our manuscript for the publication.

If you had any further questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Yours sincerely,

Agnieszka Marek

Tomasz Lisiecki

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to extend my sincerest gratitude for your work on revising the article. The improvements you've made have undoubtedly enhanced the quality and clarity of the manuscript.

However, I would like to kindly remind you of the importance of including a paragraph in the article that outlines the ethical considerations of our research. Your own answer could be enough:

"All the informants were over 18 years old and they consciously agreed on taking part in the research and using their answers in a scientific paper. The data is stored in separate folders on my computer and is not shared with external parties. The research design was accepted by the Disciplinary Ethical Committee at our University so we fulfilled all ethical requirements."

Including this paragraph is crucial not only for transparency but also to ensure that the research is conducted in accordance with ethical standards and guidelines. It provides important context for readers regarding the ethical procedures followed throughout the study.

Once again, thank you for your dedication. I look forward to seeing the final version of the article.

Best regards,