Diverse Impact of Sensitive Sub-Categories of Demographic Variables on Safety Climate of High-Rise Building Projects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper aims to examine the influence of sub-categories of demographic variables on 10 construction safety climate (SC). The variances in respondents’ distribution among sub-categories of demographic 12 variables, and influence of each sub-category of demographic variables on SC statements were examined in this work. Some comments are suggested,

1. The novelty of this study should be further emphasized.
2. The literature review is a little bit out of date. The author should add some more recent references in the lase three years related to this work.
3. It would be better to highlight the major difficulties and challenges in this scenario, and the original achievements to solve them, in abstract and introduction, especially concerting the different from the previous works.
4. What is the potential error of the data collected from under-construction high-rise buildings in Pakistan?
5. The analysis on the data is poor. Moreover, there is a lack of comparative analysis with the previous research.

Author Response

We, the authors, are grateful for the encouraging remarks. We also appreciate the kind concerns expressed by the reviewer on the initial submission of our manuscript.

In the light of reviewer’s suggestions, we have incorporated appropriate changes which are highlighted in the revised manuscript in the RED font.

The minor changes, though not explained in the succeeding lines, have also been highlighted in RED font for easy identification.

Moreover, to enhance the readability, the manuscript has been proofread, and appropriate changes have been made to make it more readable.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

MAJOR COMMENTS:

1. Abstract: The study's research question and aim, applied research methodology, and contributions to the body of knowledge, must be much more clearly highlighted. The way the abstract is written now is, in places, very convoluted, adn the aforementioned important aspects are either obscured or not written at all.
2. The research goal of the manuscript is described in the Introduction moderately well, but the research question itself must be more precisely elaborated on.
3. While studies focusing on specific contexts, and especially countries in the Global South, are well-received and encouraged, the reason this study would appeal in an international audience should be further explained. How would an international reader be benefitted from reading a study focusing on Pakistan? Can you name one or more compelling reasons? In the abstract you mentioned a cautious generalization of your methodology - maybe that's the point of interest for a non-Pakistani reader?
4. A delineation of the structure of the paper (sections etc.) should be placed at the end of the Introduction, in order to function as a reader's guide.
5. The method followed during the conduct of the literature review has to be described (and appropriately cited) in the Methodology section as well. What kind of literature review was this (systematic, bibliometric etc.)? What kind of search engines were used? What concepts were searched? What was the temporal dimension of the review? How and why does it support your empirical questionnaire imvestigation? How do you synthesize the review results with your empirical results? Etc. Everything must be clearly and transparently accounted for. It should be noted that the aforementioned notwithstanding, the authors are commented for their detailed methodological description of the empirical part of this study.

MINOR COMMENTS:

1. For the next review cycle, the authors are advised to include line numbers throughout the manuscript (as they did in its first page), so that the review process can be facilitated. In its current form, the manuscript was very cumbersome to review.
2. More references are needed in the Introduction and the Literature Review sections. In principle, any and all sentences in those sections should be cited (as they constitute the background of the study), unless it is explicitly understood that what is stated is the authors' opinion or analytical result. The absence of line numbers makes it hard to pinpoint specific spots where citations are needed, but this reviewer believes that the authors can find the approproate text excerpts.

Author Response

We, the authors, are grateful for the encouraging remarks. We also appreciate the kind concerns expressed by the reviewer on the initial submission of our manuscript.

In the light of reviewer’s suggestions, we have incorporated appropriate changes which are highlighted in the revised manuscript in the RED font.

The minor changes, though not explained in the succeeding lines, have also been highlighted in RED font for easy identification.

Moreover, to enhance the readability, the manuscript has been proofread, and appropriate changes have been made to make it more readable.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have replied my comments properly, and I suggest acceptance of this paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

I feel that the authors did well in addressing the review comments of the previous cycle. My only standing inquiry would be that in research articles, each and every part of the study should always be explained and elaborated on in the research methodology. The long-standing research standards of transparency and replicability demand so.

So, while it is true that this is not a literature review article and is never claimed to be one, the fact that a literature review part is indeed included, means that this literature review should be appropriately explained and cited in the research methodology. My emphasis would be on appropriately. This means that the emphasis on the elaboration should be analogous to the type of the article. Since this article is not a literature review per se, an over-elaboration is not needed, but an elaboration as such should exist. Given this, and while I feel that some more content could be offered about the design of the literature review part, at least I feel that this part of the article stands on much more stable ground now that Zahoor et al. (2017b) is emphasized.

In conclusion, I feel that no major revisions are needed anymore. The article is now much stronger and I'd be happy to see it published. It is only with collegial interest that I've put the asterisk above, for future consideration.