The Importance of Measuring Students’ Opinions and Attitudes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
First of all, please check your English one more time. It is not too bad, but it still requires some editing. For example, on line 47 you call rows files. The rows in your data represent respondents, not files. There are some typo errors too. In section 3 you even have incomplete sentences.
Second, and this is most important of all, open (text) answers should be in the dataset with the rest of the responses, not in the data descriptor as Table 6. Please move content of Table 6 to the dataset.
Third, the list of questions should a part of the dataset too, not a part of the descriptor. It can be added as column headers as a separate sheet, or as a separate file. In any case, if I wanted to play with your dataset in R or Python in its current state, I would have to manually copy all the questions from the data descriptor to the spreadsheet. It's not very convenient.
Fourth, please make sure that description matches the dataset perfectly. Currently I spotted a few inconsistencies, such as:
Column 2 (gender) has values "H" and "M" and you wrote that it has values "0" and "1" in the descriptor.
There are columns 10.1 and 10.2 in the data but only one question 10 in the descriptor. Same concerns 15.1 / 15.2, 18.2 / 18.2, and 20.1 / 20.2
Questions 16 and 17 have values "s" and "n" instead of English "yes" and "no".
There are blank and unlabelled columns.
Please fix all the inconsistencies that I've spotted and check the descriptor again - maybe I missed something.
Fifth, the main value of this dataset is question 23 because the rest is essentially a student feedback on teaching that all educators are too familiar with. If you had a wider spread of responses in questions 21 and 22, they would be interesting too as they would probably show the Danning-Krueger effect, but in the current state, the spread of answers to questions 21 and 22 does not allow researchers see any interesting patters. I am not suggesting to delete the rest of questions and responses - you've collected them and they may be useful for some researchers - but please emphasize the fact that the main value of your dataset is in question 23. You may want to feature a chart of responses to question 23 as the graphical abstract.
Sixth, in my opinion, including samples of continuous assessment questions has a very limited value, probably only to educators from the same narrow discipline. I suggest to delete all samples of continuous assessment from the main body of the data descriptor and move them to supplementary materials.
Seventh, your analysis and interpretation of the findings on page 9 may be valuable, but should be a part of a research paper, not data descriptor. So please delete it.
Author Response
See file attached
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of data descriptor: “Importance of measuring students’ attitudes towards continuous assessment”
15 Feb 2019
This dataset comes from a survey of students in a chemical engineering course. Students were asked about study habits and exam type preferences.
Data Description:
The data description is nearly ready to be published, but needs a few edits. See below.
Data Quality:
The dataset is solid, and appropriate quality control was used.
Data Access/Archiving/Metadata:
This dataset is in a useful format, and archived in a way to be openly accessible and used by others.
Edits:
Please add near line 140 that the dataset is in the Spanish language. It would be helpful in the data descriptor to give a brief translation to English for the non-numerical data.
A short description of the course is needed: what year in school is it typically taken, what pre-requisites does the course have, etc. This way it can be more easily compared to other universities’ similar courses.
A more up-to-date reference for ref#2 would be good, but it is not necessary.
Table 1 needs a short description or a better title. It took me a few reads to understand what the table was showing.
The most important edit is that I was uncertain why numbers 10, 15, 18, 20, 23 have multiple responses. This needs to be clearly explained. My guess is that it refers to midterm1 vs. midterm 2?
I suggest changing the keywords to the following: student opinion, midterm exam, exemption exam, chemical engineering, energy engineering
Lines 208-209 need to be changed or removed.
I did not understand the numbering of the open answers originally, but now I see that it refers to the participant number. I recommend changing the language around line 139 to something like “The comments were numbered to be consistent with the dataset order; comments by number 10 correspond to the 10th row of data in the dataset.” It is great that this connection exists—it adds good value to the dataset.
Author Response
Reviewer #2
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Review of data descriptor: “Importance of measuring students’ attitudes towards continuous assessment”
15 Feb 2019
This dataset comes from a survey of students in a chemical engineering course. Students were asked about study habits and exam type preferences.
Data Description:
The data description is nearly ready to be published, but needs a few edits. See below.
Data Quality:
The dataset is solid, and appropriate quality control was used.
Data Access/Archiving/Metadata:
This dataset is in a useful format, and archived in a way to be openly accessible and used by others.
Response: The reviewer is acknowledged for all the constructive criticism. All the points raised have been addressed and responded below.
Edits:
Please add near line 140 that the dataset is in the Spanish language. It would be helpful in the data descriptor to give a brief translation to English for the non-numerical data.
Response: The dataset has been completely translated to English and non-numerical data have been substituted by numbers, according to the coding detailed in Table 5.
A short description of the course is needed: what year in school is it typically taken, what pre-requisites does the course have, etc. This way it can be more easily compared to other universities’ similar courses.
Response: this information has been included in section 1.
A more up-to-date reference for ref#2 would be good, but it is not necessary.
Response: Unfortunately there are no new editions of this valuable book and I would not feel comfortable by replacing it with a short research paper or a different book.
Table 1 needs a short description or a better title. It took me a few reads to understand what the table was showing.
Response: The title has been modified making it clearer.
The most important edit is that I was uncertain why numbers 10, 15, 18, 20, 23 have multiple responses. This needs to be clearly explained. My guess is that it refers to midterm1 vs. midterm 2?
Response: This is exactly the reason. Footnotes to Table 4 have been included to show this.
I suggest changing the keywords to the following: student opinion, midterm exam, exemption exam, chemical engineering, energy engineering
Response: The keywords have been modified following the reviewer’s suggestion.
Lines 208-209 need to be changed or removed.
Response: Thanks for this correction. These lines were part of the manuscript template and had been left there by mistake.
I did not understand the numbering of the open answers originally, but now I see that it refers to the participant number. I recommend changing the language around line 139 to something like “The comments were numbered to be consistent with the dataset order; comments by number 10 correspond to the 10th row of data in the dataset.” It is great that this connection exists—it adds good value to the dataset.
Response: This comment has been added. To clarify it even more, the open answers have been added to the dataset.
