Classification by Nurses’ Work Values and Their Characteristics: Latent Profile Analysis of Nurses Working in Japanese Hospitals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

even if your study regards an interesting field of studies (since nowadays nursing is a crucial profession), I think that you should improve some aspects.

First of all, your aim is essentially explorative in nature, and the related results essentially descriptive in nature. I mean that you did not postulate any type of actual relationship between variables included, indeed the study does not present hypotheses, based on previous literature.

Another important weakness regards the first part of the manuscript: the Introduction (even if well written) is really very (too much) short, and some relevant aspects are totally missing. More specifically, I think that, since data have been collected during the acute phase of pandemic, the context must be better described. In other words, a more general framework (from also a social perspective) could be useful.

Finally, the third and major weakness is the total lacking of practical implications. Even if the study is purely explorative and descriptive in nature, in my opinion it is very poor in case of absence of applicative aspects.

Minor aspects: I suggest to revise the laguage (it's good but I think that it could be further improved); the sample is very unbalanced with reference to the gender: nurses are mainly females, but a sample including 92.2% of women is quite abnormal in my opinion; in which language the questionnaire on nurses' work values has been administered? Has it been adapted? Alternative, please better describe this point; across all studies I read in the past, the UWES includes three (and not only one!) factor, so I found it very unusual; in the Discussion each single result is presented, but a more general structure, including all the results and a general framework, is missing. It seems as a sort of "list". 

I thing that the paper is generally well written, even if it could be revised by a native speaker, in order to further improve the level of language quality.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

-interesting work, well explained and described limitations of the study

-an interesting final conclusion that could have an impact on reducing problems with the nursing staff: "Respecting the way these nurses want to work rather than interrupting their careers may prevent a decline in their work values, work engagement, and life satisfaction"

-the work meets the conditions of scientific work,

-please correct typos

- please specify the goals of the manuscript

-please take a look at the bibliography, which is very broad in this field, maybe it's not worth reaching for studies from before 2010?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read this paper. The paper refers to an exciting and relevant research topic and it is well written.

Although it's an interesting goal, uses an exciting methodology, I have some considerations regarding the paper:   

I suggest the authors to revise the abstract. There is no need to add statistical results in the abstract

The authors should in-depth the explanation, theoretically, regarding the subdomains of the work values

The data collection was made during the covid-19 pandemic. Is there any change this fact influenced the results?

The hypothesis are not clearly presented in the first section (introduction) but are referred in the discussion

The authors should add practical and managerial implications.

I hope these comments and suggestions help the authors to improve the quality and readability of their manuscript. Good luck.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper investigates an interesting and important topic about classification of nurse’s work values and characteristics. From my perspective, this is an interesting and well written manuscript, och the design and process of the study is easy to follow as a reader.  I think the study contributes with many interesting aspects and results. Have some comments.

Comments

1.       Consider having the same purpose in both abstract and introduction.

2.       Is it necessary to clarify what level of education is basic education? Internationally, the undergraduate education to become a nurse is usually a bachelor’s degree. May be valuable given the generalizability of the study. From my perspective, there are few participants with bachelor or master level. In Table 1, only n=150, which in relation to many other countries is few.

3.       Please clarify Figure 1; x and y axis. Difficult to interpret at the moment.

4.       It is possible to merge some of the tables?

5.       Please discuss generalizability of your results relation to an international audience. See nr.2 (comments)

6.       Please add more discussion and reflections about methodological considerations. E.g., Data collection, measurement, response rate, analysis

7.       It is possible to synthesize the conclusion?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf