Association between Self-Efficacy and Learning Conformity among Chinese University Students: Differences by Gender
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors presented an improved version of their mansucript.
However, the article is, in general, a medium one. Even of the idea is interesting, the writting style is poor and the Introduction section is presenting very simple and licence-degree-like-information.
There is a poor presentation of data - please see lines 249-252: ”Table 8 shows the mean scores of male and female university students in this study. The study results showed that male and female students differed in their mean scores for general self-efficacy ...”
IF the AE assumes the transformation of the article to improve it in order to be suitable for the Sustainability journal - considering the high IF....
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Thank you very much for your care and patience in pointing out my research problems.
I have uploaded my line-by-line answers as an attachment to answer them better.
Thank you for your support and understanding, and I hope to receive your approval!
Thank you!
Bin Xiao, Guandong Song
School of Humanities and Law, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China
2022/6/24
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
I believe that the article has been improved and that the suggestions I made to the authors have been taken into consideration.
However, the authors should revise the following quote, where it says:
Rojo Robas, V.; Villarroel Villamor, J.D.; Madariaga Orbea, J.M. The affective domain in learning mathematics according to students' gender. Revista latinoamericana de investigació n en matemá tica educativa 2018, 21, 183-202.
It should read: Rojo Robas, V.; Villarroel Villamor, J.D.; Madariaga Orbea, J.M. The affective domain in learning mathematics according to students' gender. Revista latinoamericana de investigación en matemática educativa 2018, 21, 183-202.
King regards
Author Response
Dear Reviewer.
Thank you very much for your care and patience in pointing out my research problems.
I have uploaded my line-by-line answers as an attachment to answer them better.
Thank you for your support and understanding, and I hope to receive your approval!
Thank you!
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
I agree with the proposed changes. By recommendation would be to make revisions before deciding on publication.
a) Research objectives These should be framed with "To+ infinitive". The structure of the current objectives is not adequate.
b) Introduction The introduction focuses on conformity but ignores the second most important topic of the paper, which is self-efficacy. This needs to be developed.
c) Materials and methods Before the participants section the authors need to develop a section on the methodological design they followed and justify its adequacy in relation to the nature of the research objectives
d) Discussion There is disconnection between the resources mentioned in the introduction and the resources mentioned in the discussion. The discussion is a great opportunity to link the literature review of the authors and the collected data. This also confirms the need to further develop the introduction section.
Some interesting literature on self-efficacy I recommend the authors to use is the following:
https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/2227-7102/12/2/131/htm
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3768301
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Thank you very much for your suggestions on the discussion section, which are important to improve the quality of the paper.
To better answer your questions, I have put the itemized answers in the attachment.
Thank you again for your guidance and I hope to receive your approval.
Best wishes
2022/6/24
Bin Xiao
Northeastern University
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the second version of the manuscript. Even if the new version is much improved, it is still far away from the a manuscript that is suitable for publication in Sustainability.
I recommend to the author to carefully revise the manuscript and to check the style of the Journal. Hard work and adjusting to scholarship publishing demands need hardwork.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Thank you for your support and advice on my dissertation. Your advice has helped me learn how to take my dissertation seriously and how I can improve its quality, all of which are important.
In response to your suggestions, I have made substantial changes and adjustments to my thesis, and I hope to receive your support.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
There are two fundamental difficulties with this paper. The first is the discussion of self-efficacy. The authors actually do themselves a disservice in their discussion about how self-efficacy develop. They refer to it as an information processing model. I don't believe I ever saw Bandura refer to self-efficacy as based on information processing. Instead he introduced his triadic model - that it is an interaction of stimuli from the environment, a developing filter for that information, and the way the individual responds based more and more on this filter. I think it would help the authors a great deal if they really fleshed out Bandura's model here and discussed how this would lead to specific types of learning conformity. I think it would eventually be an excellent model for the authors' thesis, which I believe in the long run has great merits.
The second structural flaw is the discussion on learning conformity. I have not background in this concept, although it sounds interesting and I may eventually try and find out more about it. The authors never explain exactly what learning abidance, learning obedience and learning conformity actually is and why they are important. I was sort of left to guess while reading the paper. I kept thinking, this is important but I was not really sure why. I think the authors must both define and explain learning conformity in much greater detail.
There is the germ of a really interesting paper here but a great deal of work needs to be done.
Reviewer 2 Report
- According to the title, the authors want to explore Chinese Universities students' perception, whereas it not clarify the sample is representative or not. As we know the Chinese universities are ranked to varied hierarchy, how can you confirm the participants selected are representative.
- In my part the gender is a control varible rather than a mediator.
- If you want to proof that there are three dimensions of learning comformity, you need to test the modle fitness with CFA. The current methodoloy employed in this study is not qualified for an rigourous emperical process.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review the article entitled ”Association Between Self-Efficacy and Learning Conformity Among Chinese University Students: Gender as a Mediating Factor”.
The research is interesting and the manuscript has potential so I would recommend to the authors the following changes:
- defining the population as ”Chinese University Students” is not clear. It is about Students studying in China (national or internatinal students) or National Students in China = Chinese strudents - please clarify the population.
- there is no information about the universities where the questionnaire was applied, how the respondents were selected, how many universities were involved, private/public etc
- there is no information about the response rate, the inclusion/exclusion criteria
- the authors contribution must be detailed
- Abstract should be written conforming to journal”s requirements - there is no statistical data that should be reported in the Abstract section
- the Reader is confusing - it is a scientific reserch or it is about the validation of a tool? the content should be presented conforming to that idea
- the manuscript seems to be part of a wider research - the mandatory statistical analysis (descriptive, comparative, correlation) is missing - even if the auhtors focused on the mediating factor
- there are a lot of langauge and editing mistakes, please revise the manuscript following journal”s rules regarding editing and reporting results
- the paragraphs should be splitted - there are different ideas that are inserted into the same paragraphs - socio-demogrpahic characteristics should be separated from education/academic characteristics etc
- in general, the manuscript is mixing factor analysis, moderating effect and regression analysis in the same manuscript...the authors should focus on the main objective of the research or to present a more extensive manuscript in order to better shape the ideas.
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper is of interest because it analyses the relationship between self-efficacy and learning conformity in its different types: learning abidance, learning obedience and learning compliance. The authors have carried out a quantitative study using the General Self-Efficacy Scale and the Learning Compliance Scale. To conduct this research, the authors draw on an interesting sample of 339 participants (Chinese university students). The authors suggest that general self-efficacy has a negative effect on learning obedience, while it has a positive effect on learning abidance and learning compliance. The authors point out the need to enhance students' motivation to learn obedience and improve self-efficacy. Among other issues.
Authors are encouraged to include in the abstract the place where the study was conducted (country).
The authors describe the whole procedure, instrument and participants in detail and correctly. On the other hand, appropriate parametric statistical analysis tests have been used. However, the authors should indicate how the participants were recruited for the study and the criteria for the selection of the participants: which universities do the students belong to, what studies are they pursuing? Authors are encouraged to state the population size and sample selection procedure.
On the other hand, the theoretical framework of the study presents an interesting review of primary and secondary scientific sources. However, although the paper succeeds in addressing a large number of references and studies on this topic, the authors only use 8 references published in the last three years out of a total of 32. It is recommended that the authors carry out a more exhaustive search on current research (last 3 years) related to the topic in order to improve the introduction and discussion of the manuscript. I recommend increasing the percentage of citations from the last three years to 40% of the total number of references in the manuscript.
This review should help to improve the discussion of the article.
