Factors Influencing the Utilization of Academic Research Results in Evidence-Based Management of Chinese Primary and Secondary Schools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is very well written. The ideas are clear, well articulated and sequenced. The article is organized in several sections, fulfilling the stages of a scientific research, and that contribute to the understanding of the study. The Tables are well structured and present the results clearly. Bibliographic references are relevant. The criterion of including bibliographic references published less than five years ago is fulfilled. Thus, the article is presented in a well-structured manner.

The study carried out is relevant both from an educational point of view and from an research point of view. It addresses a subject relevant to educational contexts. It provides a significant contribution to the importance of using academic research results in school evidence-based management (EBMgt). The fact that some of the results obtained in this study differ from other research contributes to the reflection and deepening of the theme under study.

It is proposed small modifications, but only in order to increase the quality of the article:

Line 3: Although it can be inferred, it will be important to make explicit at the beginning of the article the type of schools in which the study is related.

Line 151: Indicate the distribution of schools principals and administrators by the type of schools to which they belong.

Lines 152-153: Review the statement made, because there are some significant differences in the characteristics "Sex", "Working years" and "Education levels". 

Line 157: Standardize the language used. If in Table 1, one of the characteristics is called "Sex", then the word "sex" should also be used in this sentence instead of "gender".

Author Response

Thank you very much for your insightful suggestions here. We have carefully considered them and our responses to the comments are listed below：

Line 3: Although it can be inferred, it will be important to make explicit at the beginning of the article the type of schools in which the study is related.

Reply： We followed your suggestion and explicated the type of schools. Therefore, in our revised manuscript, the title was changed to： Factors Influencing the Utilization of Academic Research Results in Evidence-Based Management of Chinese Primary and Secondary Schools.

Line 151: Indicate the distribution of schools principals and administrators by the type of schools to which they belong.

Reply：According to your suggestion, we described the distribution of the participants by the type of schools to which they belong. You can find the change in Table 1.

Lines 152-153: Review the statement made, because there are some significant differences in the characteristics "Sex", "Working years" and "Education levels". 

Reply：We have reviewed all the statements concerning "Sex", "Working years" and "Education levels". You can find the changes from our revised manuscript which are marked up using the “Track Changes” function.

Line 157: Standardize the language used. If in Table 1, one of the characteristics is called "Sex", then the word "sex" should also be used in this sentence instead of "gender".

Reply：We are grateful for the suggestion. As suggested we have changed "gender" to "sex" in the sentence. And all the words that refer to this characteristic are called "sex" in our paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

I really enjoy reading this interesting study. There are some minor improvements that could be considered:

1. The number 4 and number 9 references are the same.

2. More recent (2020-2022) references can be consulted for future development discussion

3. The Research Hypothesis section can be further improved with a research framework diagram to visualize the hypothesis with a clear structure.

4. The rationale for having one single item to measure the "application of EBMgt" is insufficient. Please provide more details.

5. This article has a sound discussion of the practical implications. It would be better if a same-level theoretical implication could be discussed as well.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your constructive comments. According to your advice, we amended the relevant part of the manuscript. And your questions were answered below.

1. The number 4 and number 9 references are the same.

Reply： The number 9 reference was deleted. And we checked all the references in our paper to make sure they are all relevant to the contents of the manuscript.

2. More recent (2020-2022) references can be consulted for future development discussion

Reply：Thanks for your insightful suggestion here. We followed your suggestion and included two recent references concerned with our topic. You can find the added two parts as follows.

Part 1: Recently, a novel partnership approach called the Partner Schools Program(PSP) provides a promising approach that brings educators, researchers, and research brokers together. PSP allows educators and researchers to design the research questions and methods together. And with the support of knowledge brokers, research can be transformed into meaningful and contextually relevant formats(Macmahon, Leggett & Carroll, 2022). In the future, more collaborative approaches should be tried to promote the use of research and evidence in educational practice.

Part 2: Research on knowledge mobilization in educational organizations shows that contextual factors, such as organizational mission, context, capacity, and social and political context, affect research use in different kinds of organizations(Malik, 2020).

Reference:

Macmahon S,; Leggett J,; Carroll A . Partnering to Learn: A Collaborative Approach to Research Translation for Educators and Researchers. Mind, Brain, and Education. 2022, 16(2),79-88.

Malik S . Knowledge Mobilization for Impact: A Multi-Case Study of Education Organizations. International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership. 2020, 16(6).

3. The Research Hypothesis section can be further improved with a research framework diagram to visualize the hypothesis with a clear structure.

Reply：We appreciate your suggestion. And in order to improve the quality of our manuscript we added Figure 1 in the revised manuscript to visualize the hypothesis.

4. The rationale for having one single item to measure the "application of EBMgt" is insufficient. Please provide more details.

Reply：Thank you for your comment. The measurement of the "application of EBMgt" in existing research is mixed and inconclusive. However, some researchers use one single response item to measure the use of specific sources of knowledge and evidence(Dalheim, Harthug & Nilsen, 2012; Zhang, Zhuo, 2020). Based on this, we also used a single item to measure the research use in EBMgt of Chinese Primary and Secondary Schools. To be more clear, we provided more details to describe the instrument of “Application of EBMgt” in our manuscript. And you can find the brief description as follows:

According to existing research, one single response item can be used to measure the use of specific sources of evidence. In this study, we use a single item developed by Zhang and Zhuo to measure the application of evidence-based management.

Reference:

Dalheim, A.; Harthug, S.; Nilsen, R. M.; Nortvedt, M. W. Factors influencing the development of evidence-based practice among nurses: a self-report survey. BMC Health Services Research. 2012, 12(1), 367-375.

Zhang X,; Zhuo Z. Analysis of factors affecting the use of academic achievements by government staff from an evidence-based perspective. Journal of Northeast University (Social Science Edition). 2020, 22 (02): 58-65+73.

5. This article has a sound discussion of the practical implications. It would be better if a same-level theoretical implication could be discussed as well.

Reply：According to your comment, we have added the suggested content to the manuscript in “Introduction” and “Recommendations and suggestions” in order to have a more detailed discussion regarding the theoretical implication of our paper. You can find the added 3 parts as follows.

Part1:

This study focuses on the utilization of academic research in Chinese primary and secondary schools， which may contribute to the literature on EBMgt in the context of education.

Part2:

Our findings may help researchers and educators in gaining a deep understanding of the situation of evidence-based management practice in Chinese primary and secondary schools. Further, the findings also enrich the understanding of factors influencing the adoption of EBMgt in school management.

Part3:

The current study enhances the understanding of Chinese school leaders’ attitude toward EBMgt , the types of evidence school administrators use and the factors influencing the research use in EBMgt .

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors investigated whether and how school administrators in China consult evidence when making decisions. A questionnaire survey was conducted among school principals and administrators to investigate the situation of evidence-based management in schools. This is an interesting study that explored human behavior in the search for evidence. Overall, it is well written and the reasoning is sound. However, I recommend the authors to publish the raw survey data. If the results are not available, the reasons should be stated. Other minor comments are as follows

-Table 2 shows the types of evidence for EBMgt in schools. To get a better sense of each category of evidence, it would be helpful to see the actual questions that respondents were asked. It could be presented as a supplementary information.

-The text needs to be edited more thoroughly as it contains some typographical errors.

-Reference #35 is missing.

Author Response

We are grateful for your comments and advice. According to your advice, we amended the relevant part of the manuscript and our responses are listed below：

1. However, I recommend the authors to publish the raw survey data. If the results are not available, the reasons should be stated.

Reply：According to your recommendation, we are willing to publish the raw survey data as supplemental material called “Raw Survey Data”.

2. Table 2 shows the types of evidence for EBMgt in schools. To get a better sense of each category of evidence, it would be helpful to see the actual questions that respondents were asked. It could be presented as a supplementary information.

Reply：We appreciate your suggestion. And in order to present more information we would like to supply the actual questions that participants were asked in the questionnaire as supplemental material called “Types of evidence of EBMgt in schools”.

 

3.The text needs to be edited more thoroughly as it contains some typographical errors.

Reply：Thank you for your suggestion, we carefully proofread the manuscript to minimize typographical, grammatical, and bibliographical errors.

4.Reference #35 is missing.

Reply：The number 35 reference was added. And we checked all the references in our paper to make sure they are all relevant to the contents of the manuscript.