Are Tourism Practitioners Happy? The Role of Explanatory Style Played on Tourism Practitioners’ Psychological Well-Being

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The authors relied on the PERMA model to investigate the influence of tourism practitioners’ explanatory style on their psychological well-being

Despite the positive features of the study, there are some considerations to take care before the paper can be published.

The following comments will summarize my appreciation and major concerns with your paper. I hope these comments help you further improve your study.

Introduction

1. The authors defined PWB as the WHO stated, see: “According to the World Health Organization (WHO),psychological well-being is a state of well-being in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, and can work productively. If an industry fails”. This definition is not the definition of mental health by WHO?

Literature review

1. The literature review is outdated and there are missing relevant and recent references in the field.
2. “As a major positive psychology scheme, this model contains elements of both hedonic (purposeful life) and eudemonic (joy and pleasure) traditions…” The authors should check this. You might mean the opposite.
3. Page 6, line 165: the authors state “some studies….” But which studies are you talking about?
4. Page 9, line 227: the same for this line. Which studies?
5. Page 9, line 230: what study are you referring? Please add the reference.
6. There is a lack of a solid theoretical background that supports the hypotheses. For instance, the authors would benefit if they included the theoretical perspective of cognitive appraisal (see Lazarus, 1999).

Method

7. Please provide more information regarding the sample it self, and regarding the procedure of data collection.
8. Measures: please be consistent when describing the measures used in the study. In explanatory style for instance, you do not mention the points of the scale used.
9. Measures: indicate the Cronbach alpha.
10. Which software have you used to analyse the data?
11. Please, restructure the method section. It is confused and creates a wrong idea.
    1. Sample and procedure
    2. Measures
    3. Data analyses

Results

12. Please provide a table with the descriptive statistics and correlations and simplify the description of the results. All in all, what is relevant there? Wont it be the hypotheses testing? To which the authors presented only a few lines about?

Discussion

13. Please, develop the discussion section, considering the theoretical improvements made in the literature review.
14. Similarly, to the literature review, the authors would benefit the paper by adding more recent and relevant references.
15. The limitations and future research should be elaborated.
16. What are the main practical implications of the study?

Proof Language

17. The manuscript would benefit of a proof reading.
18. The authors use regularly the passive voice, consider to change it for the active voice.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,   I appreciated the topic under investigation. Please find below detailed some recommendations for the revision of the manuscript:

(1) You may mention that your study falls within the extensive field of occupational health psychology, taking elements from positive psychology.
(2) In the abstract (line 21) you mentioned that the results of current research are contributing to the PCB in different cultures. It goes without saying that your results are generalizable to other cultures, although your study is not cross-cultural. Consequently, you must rephrase that phrase
(3) Please insert in the introduction the operationalization of the concepts used, ie SWB as well as psychosocial wellbeing according to the definitions mentioned in the literature (Ed Diener, respectively Carol Ryff).
(4) line 260 - Aici este o probema metodologica: "In addition, to increase the accuracy of the scale test, the questionnaire
"Do you understand that the original scale is not robust enough? What criteria do you rely on? Also, on what basis did you add six other items?" Did you measure the validity of the content? Please fill in the internal consistency coefficient for each subscale, considering that the scale used has five factors.
(5) line 308 - must replace "was" with "ranged"
(6) In order for your results to be relevant, then a key condition is to use robust measures. According to the indicators calculated in the CFA, your model is not fitted to the data because GFI and other indicators are below the cutoffs mentioned in the literature. Values below .90 indicate poor fit.
That is why you should consider the possibility of correlating some residues.
Another cause of poor fitted could be that you did not calculate the normal distribution. Certainly data distribution is skewed because you said most have high PCBs. For non-normal distribution you must use an appropriate estimation method. In AMOS / SPSS you have the option of bootstrapping for example. If you correct this problem, you may be able to get better indicators of goodness of fit.

(7) Mention in the limits section that you did not consider a possible covariate of the model, more precisely the professional experience.

Good luck!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The submitted article “Are tourism practitioners happy? The role of explanatory style played on tourism practitioners’ psychological well-being” described the study on the associations between attributional style and PWB among tourism practitioners. Although the examined associations are not new to the field, the focus on a particular workplace/job seems to be an advantage of the study. However, the goals should be presented more clearly and methodology should be improved. I have several suggestions which should be addressed in order to improve the manuscript. I enlisted them below:

#1. Please, explain the acronym PERMA in the abstract.

#2. The first sentence of the introduction: “As a leisure activity, tourism is, by virtue of its own characteristics, more likely than other fields to approach and touch upon the topic of well-being” seems hard to understand. Could the idea behind the sentence be formulated easier?

#3. Please, add one sentence on the differences between subjective well-being and psychological well-being in the introduction. This differentiation is included later on (at p. 4). However, the absence of the clear distinction in the introduction can be misleading for the Readers.

#4. Please, try to concisely explain why the explanatory style can be treated as important for tourism practitioners’ well-being in the introduction.

#5. Please, explain ASQ acronym. It is also important to explain the modifications of PERMA questionnaire (adding new items; please report them in the manuscript).

#6. Please, include information on inclusion/exclusion criteria of participation in the study.

#7. In section 5.1. the Authors discussed standard deviations and means without referring to standardization of the measures. Which is the base of assumptions that standard deviation is lower or higher? Were the descriptive results compared to some norms? If not, these analyses seems inappropriate.

#8. At p. 8, the Authors suggest that measurement models had a good fit to the data. However, indices e.g. for RMSEA or AGFI were not meet (np. RMSEA > .08). Should the Authors explain their conclusion on the goodness of fit? The same situation at p. 14-15.

#9. Did the Authors include in the structural models covariations between latent variables?

#10. In the discussion, first sentences are problematic due to the reasons expressed in #7. Moreover, conclusions about which dimension of PWB is the highest require ANOVA in order to compare means for DV.

#11. In lines 441-444 please indicate whether the Authors refer to optimistic and pessimistic attributional style instead of using attribution for positive/negative events.

#12. The practical implications should be limited only to those which are implication of the obtained results. The results were about the associations between explanatory style and PWB. Thus, the Authors should focus on possibilities connected with e.g. trainings in more beneficial attributions among managers and employees of tourism.

#13. Other limitations are connected with cross-sectional and correlational design of the study.

#14. I failed to find the results that support the Authors’ conclusions: (l. 480-482) “Unlike previous research, this study found that the participants tended to attribute positive events to internal, unstable, and specific causes and to attribute negative events to external, stable, and global causes. Which analysis is indicative for this conclusion?

#15. Please, explain in details how the scores for all indicators from ASQ were calculated.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I am satisfied with the way how you tackled the changes. I wish you good luck with your research.

Please proofread and revise the paper carefully to improve the grammar and
language.

Author Response

I have revised the paper to improve the grammar and language, thank you very much.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for all corrections included in the revised manuscript. I have some minor suggestions:

#1. Please, include criteria of goodness of fit that you used in your SEM analysis.

#2. The figures requires some correction in order to better ilustrate which number depicts the particular path.

#3. The sensetence “ Unlike previous research, this study found that the participants tended to attribute positive events to internal, unstable, and specific causes and to attribute negative events to external, stable, and global causes." is still difficult to understand in the light of the study. Positive correlations between PWB and dimensions of attribution do not necessarily mean that positive and negative event are differenty explained.

#4. The PERMA dimensions should be better describe in terms of its measurement.

#5.  According to Tables 3 and 6 (I think that the Authors referred to these tables in response to reviewers as Table 3 and 5) they did not contain information whether SEM models included covariations between latent variables. Please, specify.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf