PONE-D-24-19546A matching method for elderly care service personnel with multiple types of service expectationsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gao,

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.

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The manuscript has received mixed reviews from the reviewers, however, both of them agree that after careful restructuring, the manuscript may be refined for acceptance. Please carefully go through the reviewers comments and revise.

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Yogesh Kumar Jain, MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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

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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

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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: Strengths :

The article clearly identifies the problems of providing care to the elderly and expectations of the service personnel from the elderly.

The methodology describes in detail how to compute expectation indices and satisfaction levels of both elderly and service personnel.

The model developed for maximizing the satisfaction levels meets the objectives and the model is adaptable to two different scenarios (sufficient and insufficient personnel) making it feasible to use under both settings.

The statistics to support the results are appropriate and quite comprehensive.

Areas for improvement:

The article, especially the abstract, repeats information, regarding the goals and outcomes, which could be presented in a more condensed manner.

A few terms, such as elastic service expectation type and inelastic service expectation type, could have been introduced using a definition for better understanding of the concept.

Reviewer #2: The paper proposed a matching method for elderly care service personnel considering multi-type service expectations with a bilateral matching optimization model. The topic is of great interest and reality, however, the academic contribution should be refined and highlighted. Here is some advice.

1.The introduction is too lengthy and should be reduced, especially focused on the home-based service matching problem for elderly care.

2."It is evident that the matching issue faced by home care providers differs from the conventional matching issue in domestic services...." Why to assert this? What are the reasons? There are some other similar claims without reasons or references, eg., "According to a survey conducted by a few domestic help companies, elderly people typically have expectations related to their age when selecting elderly care service personnel.", "...and they typically select those with higher educational backgrounds...".

3.Some expressions are redundant or repeated, eg., "Additionally, there may be an imbalance between the supply and demand of elderly service resources in actual life.", "It should be emphasized that there may be an imbalance between the demand and supply for senior service persons in real life,...".

4.The main contribution and innovation should be presented at the end of Introduction section.

5.Section 2.2, papers of matching for elderly care should be supplemented. There are some special issues on this topic recent years, such as "Smart Technology-Supported Independent Living for Older Adults" in International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction in 2023.

6.What are the differences between heavy and light black lines in Fig. 1?

7.“...elder people have inelastic expectations about gender indicators.” It is very important to give the reason for this claim, since it's the basis to classify "Gender" into the group of inelastic expectations.

8.A comparison with other current matching methods under the same circumstances should be given to validate the outperformance of the proposed method.

9.Future research should be presented in Conclusion.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Rupali Gupta

Reviewer #2: No

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A matching method for elderly care service personnel with multiple types of service expectations

PONE-D-24-19546R1

Dear Dr. Gao,

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,

Yogesh Kumar Jain, MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. 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 #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. 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 #2: Yes

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5. 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 #2: Yes

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6. 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 #2: The paper proposed a matching method for elderly care service personnel considering multi-type service expectations with a bilateral matching optimization model. The revised version is much better and well responds to my concerns. Good luck.

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7. 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 #2: No

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