Assessing university guidance and tutoring in higher education: Validating a questionnaire on Ecuadorian students

María Isabel Amor; Kasandra Vanessa Saldarriaga Villamil; Irene Dios

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253400

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 1, 2021
6 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Teresa Carvalho, Editor PONE-D-21-02928 Assessing University Guidance and Tutoring in Higher Education: Validating a questionnaire on Ecuadorian students PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Irene Dios, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. The reviews are in general favourable and suggest that, subject to minor revisions, your paper could be suitable for publication. Please consider these suggestions, and I look forward to receiving your revision. Although the theoretical framework is clear and well developed it would be good if it includes more references to international studies. The methods and techniques were well used to validate the questionnaire, however it would be good if you clarify why you started the likert scale with zero. Furthermore, you can explore and cross sociodemographic data with the 21 itens. Finally a minor remark: correct on Page 16/28 - line 302, remove the word "express". Please submit your revised manuscript by 5th. of May. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. 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Kind regards, Teresa Carvalho Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Please ensure that you include a title page within your main document. We do appreciate that you have a title page document uploaded as a separate file, however, as per our author guidelines (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-title-page) we do require this to be part of the manuscript file itself and not uploaded separately. Could you therefore please include the title page into the beginning of your manuscript file itself, listing all authors and affiliations. 3. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The methods and techniques were well used to validate the questionnaire. Regarding the Likert scale, why does it start at zero? The Sociodemographic data could be better explored and crossed with the 21 items. Most references are not in English but in Spanish and reference number 12 is not listed. Reviewer #2: The study is well written and very interesting. Moreover, as highlighted by the authors, it aims at bridging a gap in the literature regarding this domain and they seem successful. They also point to ways of improving the study (e..g including more and diverse actors, and this indeed can be made in future work). Minor remarks: Please correct on Page 16/28 - line 302, remove the word "express". ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes:** Carolina Costa Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253400.r001
Revision 1
26 Apr 2021 Author Response Dear Reviewers, Firstly, we would like to thank you for the suggestions made by the Academic Editor and the Reviewers. We have dealt with all the suggestions and they have been included in the manuscript. We thank the Reviewers for their indications, which have provided our research with better understanding and higher quality. International studies have been included in the theoretical framework. In this regard, we have added two studies (7 and 8) which are considered of interest and in line with topic under consideration. These studies had not been included in the initial version of the manuscript because they have recently been published (April 2021). These publications are very recent and high impact, so we consider that the subject is original, novel and current. Regarding the Reviewer's question 1 related to the Likert scale, the authors clarify that the scale has 5 response options with a graduation from “0” to “4”: where “0” is “completely disagree”, “1” is "disagree", "2" is "neutral", "3" is "agree", and "4" is "completely agree". A different graduation could have been indicated, for example from “1” to “5”, but it was decided to start with “0” considering the previous studies published by the authors (e.g., Dios et al., 2018. Validation of the Scale of Organizational and Didactic Competencies for Educators). We think that both options are acceptable and they do not determine the results obtained or the validation of the scale. Many references are in Spanish since it is the language of the country where the scale has been validated. Although the review includes international studies in Spanish and English, the language of publication in Latin America, and specifically in Ecuador, is Spanish. Most literature about counseling and tutoring in this country is published in Spanish. However, as indicated by the Academic Editor and Reviewer 1, we have included international studies published in English in the new version of the manuscript. In response to suggestions from Reviewer 1, the sociodemographic data have been analyzed and cross-referenced with the 21 items. It has been reflected in table 3 in the results section "Application of Q-AGT: assessment of university tutoring based on sex, university and university degree course". The reference number 12 has been included; “Authors, 2017” is substituted by “Amor MI, Dios I. Analysis of the psychometric properties of a scale on the needs of students in Tutoring. Revista de Pedagogía. 2017; 38: 35-56 ". The reference 12 in the original manuscript is now the reference 14. The errata indicated by Reviewer 2 has been corrected. The word "express" has been deleted. Finally, we include a manuscript called “Revised Manuscript with Track Changes”, which contains the changes made to the original version and another version called “Manuscript” with the incorporated changes. We have made sure to check that the manuscript complies with the PLOS ONE style requirements. Besides, the figures have been uploaded and downloaded to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE). We provide figure in this format. We have also included the supporting information section in the final manuscript. As it has been indicated by the Academic Editor, we have included the title page in the main document. We have checked that the reference list is complete and correct. The changes incorporated in the reference list have been three. We have included two references to international scientific studies, recommended by the Editor. Reference 14 (reference 12 in the original manuscript) which was incomplete (indicated by Reviewer 2) has been included. We appreciate the contributions indicated. Yours sincerely Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253400.r002
4 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Andrew R. Dalby, Editor Assessing University Guidance and Tutoring in Higher Education: Validating a questionnaire on Ecuadorian students PONE-D-21-02928R1 Dear Dr. Dios, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Andrew R. Dalby, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253400.r003
Formally Accepted
7 Jun 2021 Acceptance Letter - Andrew R. Dalby, Editor PONE-D-21-02928R1 Assessing University Guidance and Tutoring in Higher Education: Validating a questionnaire on Ecuadorian students Dear Dr. Dios: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Andrew R. Dalby Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253400.r004

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