Navigating Schools through the Pandemic Crisis: A Study on the Determinants Influencing the Well-Being of Secondary Students in Northeast Thailand

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that influence the well-being of secondary students in the aftermath of COVID-19. The authors have presented a novel, well-structured, and well-written paper. However, I would like to offer some comments and suggestions to enhance the clarity and comprehensiveness of the paper.

 

·        Several claims and statements in the introduction lack proper references, as evidenced by page 5, first paragraph, lines 208-217.

·        On page 1, line 36, the statement "There are 24 million students across various educational levels, since early childhood level and higher education level, faced the possibility of being unable to resume their studies at their respective institutions" is cited, but it would be useful to specify the country to which these numbers pertain. While the paper highlights the impact of COVID-19 on education, it should also acknowledge the differences in educational challenges experienced by different countries, particularly in developed versus developing nations. To this end, it is recommended that the paper incorporate information from this study: Jahanaray, A., Jahanaray, M., & Zohoorian, Z. (2022). Effective factors and issues in online learning in Covid-19: a global review. EDUCATIO : Journal of Education, 7(3), 121-137. https://doi.org/10.29138/educatio.v7i3.820

·        While the paper discusses student well-being as a prominent topic of discussion since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not exclusively focus on the needs of secondary students in the introduction. It is suggested that the authors provide more specific information on issues faced by secondary schools in Thailand.

·        Page 3, line 134 mentions "The OECD formulation" without prior explanation. The introduction should provide some background on the framework for context.

·        On page 3, line 103, the paper asserts that "By placing a strong emphasis on the promotion of wellbeing of students in education, it can multiply leaning outcomes, personal growth of both students and educators, so engendering a more prosperous and satisfying educational encounters for all parties concerned." Please provide an explanation of how improving students' mental health can improve educators' personal growth.

·        Page 3, line 150 highlights several means that can be employed to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on education, but it would be useful to provide concrete examples for each.

·        On page 4, line 156, the term "accommodating diverse learning styles" is used without a definition. Similarly, on page 4, line 158, the paper discusses the "supplementary of utilization of virtual platforms for social interactions," but it is unclear whether such platforms exist. If they do not, this should be acknowledged as an issue to be addressed.

·        It would be helpful if the authors could also provide some information about the role of educational institutions, in addition to educators, as many of the claims made in the introduction section focus solely on educators.

·        In the results section, the paper notes that mostly females participated in the study, which presents a challenge for generalization. The discussion should address this limitation.

·        On page 9, line 389, the paper states that several variables, including gender, age, academic standing, school location, and COVID-19 infection history, had no significance on the well-being of the study cohort. It would be useful to provide a brief explanation of these determinants in the introduction section.

 

·        The discussion should explain the result comprehensively, for example, the positive association between family relationships and student well-being.

Overall, the authors have produced an insightful paper that sheds light on an important topic. By implementing these suggestions, the paper can be further refined and contribute to the existing body of research in this area.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

·        To ensure the manuscript is easily understood by a general audience, simplification of the language is necessary. Additionally, there are a few grammatical issues that require attention. For instance, on page 3, line 130 “Psychological wellbeing can be equated to subjective wellbeing in positive psychology, physical wellbeing refers to health and lifestyle, social wellbeing refers to relationships and feeling about social life, while cognitive dimension refers to students’ proficiency in applying what they to solve problems”. Similarly, on page 4, line 186, “Friendly and inclusive within a school setting cultivates a strong sense of belonging and interconnectedness among the students.”mFurthermore, the manuscript contains numerous spelling errors that should be corrected.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s),

 

The manuscript focuses on a very important and exciting topic, the wellbeing of students. Its novelty lies in the fact that it explores the topic in a Thailand context. Additionally, there has been a tremendous amount of international research in this area since COVID-19 and several related systematic literature reviews have been conducted since then (unfortunately these are not reported in the manuscript). Overall, the manuscript is questionable and incomplete in many aspects and its scientific grounding is not satisfactory. The conceptualisation and operationalisation of the research is very weak. Without claiming completeness, some of them are described below.

 

1. Theoretical part

A lot of information is presented in the theoretical part of the manuscript (chapters 1-5), yet I think that many important details are missing and coherence needs to be strengthened. Somehow the manuscript does not cohere into a complex whole, and the links between the different sections and between the theory and the subsequent research sections are not very close. It is in these sections that the theoretical starting point and model on which the subsequent research is based should be established. This is only partially and inconsistently done.

Many basic concepts and approaches are not defined and explained (supported by literature of course); e.g. positive psychology, student well-being vs school well-being, school climate (school climate is defined in the manuscript but it is not clear on what basis this is done).

A major shortcoming is that the model of student wellbeing used is not explained in detail (and the alternative models and their differences and commonalities are not explained). There is a reference to the OECD model of student well-being being used, but this is not explained in detail (and it is not clear why the operationalisation is not based on the OECD model). Moreover, there is a discrepancy in the OECD documents referred to the model: in the theoretical section, reference is made to [15] (OECD. PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students' Well-Being. PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2017. 534https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264273856-en), but in the data collection subsection, reference is made to [41] (OECD. How's Life? 2020: Measuring Well-being; OECD Publishing: Paris, 2020. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9870c393-en), which is not a document on student wellbeing.

Regarding Section 5 (Student's perception towards COVID-19), it is not clear what the author(s) intend to present here and how it relates to the later research (I understand it indirectly, but it should be more explicitly linked to the later content of the research, as this is where the later research is based). This should be the case not only in the context of Section 5 but also in general.

Furthermore, the presentation of the context of Thailand is very lacking, without which it is very difficult to interpret the research and its results. It would also be important to describe how education was conducted in Thailand during the COVID period when schools were closed, how learning took place, etc. In addition, it is not very clear who the secondary students are in the Thailand education system (what age group, what types of schools they can attend, etc.). I note here that there is a great lack of description of previous research findings on this age group. Also, if they are focusing on OECD's PISA approach, why not present the most recent findings on this in Thailand (How is school life in Thailand?) (https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/thailand-6138f4af/)

 

2. Methodology

The methodology is less developed even compared to the theoretical part.

To determine the number of items in the sample, Cochran's formula was used, which is mentioned only in the abstract, later it is not possible to know what the parameters were to get a sample of 400 students. The relation of the sample to the total population is not known from the manuscript. The criteria for sample design are driven by the relevant criteria for the whole population, so terms such as ‘may exhibit variations’, ‘may vary’ are odd in the description of the sampling method. Do they differ according to the criteria listed or not? What exactly is known about this?

The manuscript writes about interviews, whereas, if I understand correctly, questionnaire data collection was used. However, nothing is known about the circumstances of this: who carried it out, how the data was collected, what ethical standards, principles, permissions, and when it was done. (Was conducted the data collection in the full academic year 2022?)

In the absence of a solid theoretical and conceptual basis, it is difficult to interpret the scales that reveal the individual components. It is not known how the variables were measured. For example, multiple-choice questions and Likert scales are mentioned, but for the latter, we do not know how many degrees of scale are involved, what the endpoints are. There should be much more detail on the variables used in the model. All variables should be clearly defined and operationalized to improve the reproducibility of the manuscript and the reader's understanding of the measured constructs. Ideally, some sample questions from the original questionnaire should be added, and the measurement scales should be precisely defined. The manuscript mentions e.g. the determinant role of socioeconomic status (although only in a few sentences, although it is an extremely important aspect and, as I have just checked, also in relation to Thailand), and two variables measuring the financial status of the family appear, but how this is done is not explained. Nor is it revealed what the exact method and criteria were for assessing content validity, nor what the reported Cronbach's alpha value refers to.

It is not possible to know in the model what specifically was the dependent variable (psychological, physical, social, or cognitive wellbeing, or?), nor what method was used to run the regression model (e.g. OLS ENTER method?). I am also not sure whether the author(s) treated multicollinearity. The inclusion of age and grade together in the model presumably increased multicollinearity, but nothing about this is available in the manuscript.

 

Overall, the methodology of the study is questionable, therefore, the results are uninterpretable, and the conclusions cannot be considered robust. Accordingly, I recommend the rejection of the manuscript.

 

Sincerely,

 

Reviewer

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s),

I appreciate the efforts of the author(s) to revise the manuscript, the quality of the manuscript has improved. At the same time, there are details that are still unclear and others that have not been addressed at all by the author(s).

1. It would be important to clarify what the OECD PISA measurement says about school life in relation to Thailand, as this is the conceptual basis used by the author(s) (https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/thailand-6138f4af/).

2. It remains a major shortcoming that the model of student wellbeing used is not explained in detail (and the alternative models and their differences and commonalities are not explained). It is not clear which theoretical model is tested in the empirical part. One further comment: in my professional opinion, the work of Seligman and Csikszentmihályi is simply inescapable in relation to positive psychology (as the general theoretical framework for this study).

3. However, the main shortcoming is the statistical analysis.

a) The manuscript still describes interviews, although a questionnaire was used in the research (p. 325).

b) Cochran's formula is still only mentioned in the abstract, the calculation behind it is not explained later (and the reference to the literature is missing). There is also contradictory information about the sampling: 'The selection process within each area considered various characteristics, such as urban versus non-urban settings, school sizes, and available resources, to account for the heterogeneity among schools. ' vs. the stratification of the sample was in fact by region (upper, central, lower) and settlement (urban, non-urban) ('In each selected area, five schools were randomly chosen from a list that included both urban and rural institutions, thus totaling thirty schools across the three areas.'). The sample of pupils was then selected randomly, which according to the author(s) ensures representativeness, but no data are presented to verify this (distribution of the implemented sample vs target population according to the most important dimensions). Overall, it is still not known how the sample relates to the target population. 

c) The results are not interpretable as it is not possible to know which variable measures what and how (e.g. the manuscript shows that it was measured on a Likert scale, but how many degrees, or what question or validated measure was used to measure each construct). Just one specific example (but this is the case for most variables in the model): what does the COVID-19 infection history variable measure and how? (this is simply not clear from the text)

This is essentially what this paragraph in my previous review asked for, to which no response was given, although it is one of the most crucial aspects for judging the quality of the analysis: 'In the absence of a solid theoretical and conceptual basis, it is difficult to interpret the scales that reveal the individual components. It is not known how the variables were measured. For example, multiple-choice questions and Likert scales are mentioned, but for the latter, we do not know how many degrees of scale are involved, or what the endpoints are. There should be much more detail on the variables used in the model. All variables should be clearly defined and operationalized to improve the reproducibility of the manuscript and the reader's understanding of the measured constructs. Ideally, some sample questions from the original questionnaire should be added, and the measurement scales should be precisely defined. The manuscript mentions e.g. the determinant role of socioeconomic status (although only in a few sentences, although it is an extremely important aspect and, as I have just checked, also in relation to Thailand), and two variables measuring the financial status of the family appear, but how this is done is not explained. Nor is it revealed what the exact method and criteria were for assessing content validity, nor what the reported Cronbach's alpha value refers to.'

Moreover, the following reference categories, e.g. Academic standing (grade 12 as the reference), Financial status of the family (moderate level as the reference), and The main occupation of parents (agriculture as the reference), are not interpretable in the model, as they are not dichotomous variables. Where do the other categories of this variable appear in the model?

Until the author(s) provide more details on the constructs (including their definitions) and the scales/measurement instruments used to operationalise the constructs in the study, the results of the findings cannot be interpreted and the scientific criterion of reproducibility cannot be met. 

For all these reasons, I do not support the publication of this manuscript.

Regards,

Reviewer

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s),

I appreciate the effort you have put into improving the manuscript. As a result, the quality of the manuscript has improved significantly.

There are a few things that are still unclear and need clarification.

1. it is not clear why the Cronbach's alpha for the overall questionnaire should be calculated ('The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the overall questionnaire was 0.82, indicating a high level of internal consistency.') Cronbach's alpha is a measure of the internal validity of a measurement instrument (composite index, scale, dimension). For which items does this value apply? All items? If all items, what does it indicate? It is not technically meaningful in this way.

2.

a) It is still not clear what the dependent variable in the linear regression model was specifically. Table 3 shows the 4 domains of well-being and the overall average. However, it is not explicitly stated how the indicator measuring students' well-being (which is certainly the dependent variable) was created. The question is, was an index of the 4 domains created here that shows the average of the 4 domains? The point is that this should be described anyway.

b) The independent variables have been made meaningful as a result of the additions, however, I suggest that the reference categories are also included in brackets in Table 4.

c) A new column should be added to Table 4 to include the values of the VIF indicator.

d) The following sentence is misleading: 'An examination of the independent variables' impact reveals a hierarchical significance in influencing student well-being, in descending order: perceptions of COVID-19's social impact (β = 0.299), family relationships (β = 0.174), the school personnel (β = 0.140), 516 and school physical environment (β = -0.282)' The absolute values should be considered for the strength, i.e. the good order is: perceptions of COVID-19's social impact (β = 0.299), school physical environment (β = -0.282), family relationships (β = 0.174) and the school personnel (β = 0.140). This should also be corrected in Table 4. In addition, it is not an impact, but rather the role of each variable in influencing the school (I suggest this wording instead of impact).

After these important additions, I recommend the publication of the manuscript.

All the best,

 

Reviewer

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you  very much for your insightful comments. I have revised manuscript to clarify the reliability assessment of the questionnaire by reporting Cronbach's alpha for each dimension separately (Family Climate, School Climate, Student Perception towards COVID-19 Impacts, and Well-being in Education). The description of the dependent variable now explicitly states that it is a composite index created by averaging the four well-being domains.
Table 4 has been updated to include reference categories for each categorical independent variable and a new column for VIF values to address multicollinearity concerns. Additionally, the interpretation of the variables' roles has been corrected to reflect their hierarchical significance based on absolute Beta values, clarifying that these indicate the relative importance of each variable in influencing students' overall well-being. These revisions enhance the clarity, accuracy, and robustness of the study's methodology and findings.