PONE-D-22-08087The Relationship of Work Engagement with Job Experience, Marital Status and Having Children Among Flexible Workers After the Covid-19 PandemicPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Adnan Veysel Ertemel,

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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: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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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 paper analyses an interesting topic which given the nature and actuality of the subject (work life balance), should be of interest to the readership.

I have the following proposed amendments:

(1) For the Introduction part it would be good to have some statistics on the number of Covid-19 cases, deaths. Please add some data!

(2) The Conceptual Background chapter is too mosaic, the Author should add more literature and not only refer to the two topics (Flexible Work Options and Work Engagement).

(3) I propose to reconsider and reformulate the hypotheses. The Authors have formulated too many hypotheses.

(4) The Authors wrote in line 342. "Quantitative research method was used in this study." We have no more information about this research. We can read only in the abstratc some details. It would be necessary to explain the methodology, when the survey was conducted and with whom!

(5) Because of the reformulation of the hypotheses, the summary also requires rethinking.

Reviewer #2: GENERAL COMMENTS FROM REVIEWER

MANUSCRIPT NUMBER: PHONE-D-22-08087

I. The abstract is not clear, re-write it considering context, aim(s), method, results and implications.

II. Novelty and contribution should be clarified.

III. Motivation behind the work should be forcefully discussed.

IV. More discussions are essential.

V. Comparison analysis with more articles should be discussed.

Reviewer #3: Some review comments to the author:

1. Abstract: research method should be included in this part. Besides, the results of marital status with other factors of work engagement, except absorption are not summarized.

2. Reference No. 15 is an unpublished master thesis, which should not be cited.

3. Conceptual background: are there any other studies about flexible work options in the context of post Covid-19? Comparison is needed in this case.

4. Development of hypotheses: this part needs to incoporate a comparison of these relationships in this study with other studies having the same research context to show the development of hyphotheses.

5. Materials and Methods:

- How to determine the sample size for this study?

- How to make sure the representativeness of sample?

- What are the demographics of sample?

- Given human participation, whether ethics statement including ethical approval and informed consent is needed or not.

6. Results:

- What is the basis of dividing job experience into 3 groups as in the article?

- Line 376 and 388, the number of table is incorrectly stated.

7. Discussion and Conclusion: the findings of this study should be compared with other studies of the same context.

Reviewer #4: Comments to the Author:

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. It is very well written, and it addresses an essential topic. The authors have invested a lot of knowledge and attention into the matter. These results will contribute to the growing expertise in the field. However, some parts of the study should be revised. The fact that the confirmatory analysis (CFA) was not made is critical. CFA should be done.

General comments:

1. The methodology is not described in the abstract.

2. Methods: Authors did an explorative factor analysis (EFA) to prove the scale's validity. That is good, but that is just the first step. The second step is confirmatory analysis (CFA). However, the Authors should conduct EFA and CFA to test scale validity. At this level, the CFA can determine the average extracted variance and discriminant validity using the Fornell-Larcker criterion.

3. How large was the sample? You are writing about 199 valid questionnaires, but there is no information about the sample and response rate. That should be added to the article.

4. In which country and in which language did you make your data collection? This information is missed. Please add as supplement materials the questionnaire in the language in which the survey was conducted.

5. How did you collect the data? Did you use a Paper- or Web-Based Questionnaire? This information is missed.

6. Results – Please describe in more detail the results from tables 1,2,3, and 4 in the main text. Write the main results from the hypothesis here. You have written just a sentence that is not enough.

7. Tables - Please write tables in such a way that it is easy to read. Now everything is shifted, which doesn't look good and reads badly.

8. Discussion and Conclusion – You should start the discussion with your findings, not with findings from other studies. However, this section should be structured in the following sections:

a. Overview of findings

- What were the main findings?

b. Comparisons with other studies

c. Strengths and limitations of research

d. Implications of findings

- E.g., What items were not important -why do you think this was?

Future directions for research

Conclusion

- E.g., What do you think are the key take-home messages?

Specific comments:

1. Introduction, paragraph 1, lines 26-27 - A source is missing here.

2. Introduction, lines 58-59 – Where was this study conducted? Is it related to your work? Source (9).

3. Introduction, line 77 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

4. Introduction, line 125 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

5. Introduction, line 128 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

6. Introduction, line 132 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

7. Conceptual Background, line 141 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

8. Conceptual Background, line 194 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

9. Conceptual Background, line 216 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

10. Conceptual Background, line 223, 227,236 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

11. Development of Hypotheses lines 251,263,292 – Here, you have a hyphen too many.

12. Construct Validity and Reliability – Please write which items were excluded in the table or in the text.

13. Table 1. Factor and Reliability Analysis Results - Please write the names of the items in the table. This way, the reader can get a feel for the scale. Please add cross and side loadings for each item.

14. Results, lines 378-380 – This sentence should be moved to the discussion. “It can be interpreted that married people are more concentrated on their work because their job experience increases in direct proportion to the possibility of being older than singles and because they stay at the place they work for a long time.”

15. Results - This sentence should be moved to the methods. Additionally, it would be good if you wrote how many participants were in each group. “Participants were classified into 3 different groups in terms of their experience. The first group consists of those with up to 5 years of experience, the second group consists of those with 5 to 10 years of experience, and the third group consists of those with more than 10 years of experience.”

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Katalin Liptak

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-08087_reviewer.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: GENERAL COMMENTS FROM REVIEWER.pdf

The Relationship of Work Engagement with Job Experience, Marital Status and Having Children Among Flexible Workers After the Covid-19 Pandemic

PONE-D-22-08087R1

Dear Dr. Adnan Veysel Ertemel,

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.

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Kind regards,

Rogis Baker, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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