Psychosocial Risk in COVID Context: The Impact of Economic Factors and Labour Protection Policy (ERTEs) in Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read the manuscript with interest. However, the purpose and results of the study do not seem to have led to meaningful findings as a study. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Your suggestions have been incorporated into the new version of the manuscript. We appreciate the review work, as we consider that our paper has substantially improved.

We remain attentive to any consideration,

Kind regards.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is an interesting contribution to understanding the issue of psychosocial risk during the COVID pandemic. In the paper, the psychological and social consequences of the lockdown policies has been properly presented (p. 2).

Page 2, line 41–42: the sentence suggests that the article was prepared during the pandemic (“The current pandemic will affect some more than others”). If the Authors mean some long-run effects, it should be pointed out.

The results have been properly statistically processed. The conclusion that “the pandemic does not affect everyone equally” (p. 7 line 200) is plausible one but in order to determine to what extent the pandemic has affected particular groups of society, it would be necessary to carry out surveys that would be representative. This problem should be indicated in section 4 of the article (“Discussion”).

O pages 2-3 it is not indicated how the people who took part in the study were recruited. This issue should be described in the article. Was the questionnaire simply distributed in some way, or was the questionnaire placed somewhere and the persons who wanted to contrubute to the research completed this questionnaire? Did the authors of the research take any care to ensure that the survey was representative in relation to the population of Spain or the regions where the research was carried out (apparently they did not).

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Your suggestions have been incorporated into the new version of the manuscript. We appreciate the review work, as we consider that our paper has substantially improved.

We remain attentive to any consideration,

Kind regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

REVIEW

Psychosocial Risk in COVID contexts: The impact of economic factors and labor protection policy (ERTEs) in Spain

Dear Authors, this is an interesting piece of research with important and ambitious aims. I see that the study is worth publishing due to its significant message after some major revisions.

Abstract

The current Abstract is missing descriptions about the aims and the analysis methods of the study. The aims in Abstract should be coherent with those expressed in Introduction and the methods coherent with the ideas of testing hypothesis. Also, the acronym ERTE should be explained shortly already in Abstract.

Introduction

Introduction presents an understandable description of the rationale of the study but does not connect its global approach to the Spanish facts about Covid-19 related issues in the Spanish society and labor legislation. Spanish labor protection policy, apparently called ERTE, and the basic information about contracts and their COVID-related changes between the employer and employees should be explained since they have crucial roles in the study (e.g. contractual protective employment practices, state-driven measures of protection, effective buffering).  Also, the conditions of confinement should be explained. Most importantly, the theoretical arguments and conclusions derived from earlier research that would justify the questionnaire used, are mostly missing. Currently, a large part of the earlier research is presented only in Discussion.

Methods

Please, explain how the researchers gained their access to the places/organizations of confinement, what was the total population of potential participants and how the actual participants were selected

Subsection 2.4. Instruments should be presented before subsection 2.3. Analysis, following the chronological order of the research process. And in Analysis, the actual methods used should be mentioned before the computer applications that are only tools, not methods.

Results

This reviewer found the presentation of the results to be quite clarified compared to the other sections. Of course, during the revision phase also this section must be made consistent with the potential changes in the text.

Discussion

As already commented about Introduction, those pieces of earlier research that have had an impact on the formulation of this study, including hypothesis and questionnaire, should be presented already in Introduction. After a comparison with earlier research, the new findings of this study should be emphasized: Why was this research worth conducting?

Conclusions

The conclusions should be your own, not other researchers'. I recommended that you remove the references from Conclusions to other, more proper places in your paper and present only your own thoughts, based on your study.  If you see that these references are needed, revise your text for example as follows:  As X has already noted,  we suggest that ... Contrary to Y, we see ...  and give some practical examples or recommendations of what should be done differently in potential other syndemic situations in the future.

Other comments

Line 78, What does the following sentence mean? "There are also informed of its voluntary nature"? Were the confined people informed about the voluntary nature to take part in this research?

Line 212, instead of "in this vein", it should be "in this line"

All the best for your revisions,

your Reviewer

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Your suggestions have been incorporated into the new version of the manuscript. We appreciate the review work, as we consider that our paper has substantially improved.

We remain attentive to any consideration,

Kind regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the improvement of the manuscript has been well done. It is necessary to consider psychosocial factors in order to increase the effectiveness of policies, and it is expected that the effectiveness of policies will increase through this study.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

since you have revised your paper according to my most important comments (about ERTE, the conditions of the confinement, participants etc and also provided core references already in Introduction and enhanced the practical elements in Conclusions) I will gladly recommend your paper to be published in IJERPH.

So, I do not suggest any further revision, although you seem to ignore another part of my comments. The aim and methods of your paper are  not clearly expressed in Abstract, but fortunately, they can be understood implicitly. Also, you decided not to change the order in which Instruments and Analysis and actual methods and tools should be presented along a logical course of conducting scientific research. Anyway, I think, readers are able to understand what you have been doing.

All the best for your future research,

Your Reviewer