Relative Importance of Sustainable Development Goals by Q-Sort Evaluation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author, thank you for your study. I think that the topic is very interesting given that sustainability is gaining increasing interest in recent years. However, I would like to suggest you some advices that could be helpful for you, hopefully.

 

·       Abstract must be built as follows: purpose of the article, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations/future directions. Now the elements of novelty and purpose of the article are not clear, what is done by the authors.

·       The motivation for performing this study and the goals of the analysis, need to be presented in the introductory item, as well as the novel contributions for the reference literature. Now the elements of novelty and purpose of the article are not clear, what is done by the authors? This section should contain a justification of the need and relevance of the study (the size of this section is 1.5-2 pages), thus a need for such article and a gap of current state of knowledge need to be addressed.

·       Theoretical background needs to be presented. Many scientific schools investigated SDGs, add authors, group them according to certain criteria (schools, countries, etc.), discuss what is not yet solved.

·       There is room for improving the research protocol and providing a detailed step by step illustrated model with detailed procedures of development of questionnaire; data collection, data analysis and interpretation etc. Please provide justification for chosen method, categories and representativeness of the sample size.

·       In Conclusions, the solved study objectives should be highlighted. Now this is just a duplication of information from the Abstract and Main text. Conclusions are not related with the study results. Highlight the study purposes in the "Introduction" section, hypotheses — in the "Methods” section, prove them in the "Results" section, and reflect the degree of evidence in the "Conclusions" section. Also, in the "Conclusions" section, highlight the limitations of the study and prospects for further studies. The theoretical and practical implications are not given nor discussed, but it seems rather that the readers are supposed to conclude the lessons learned by themselves.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

thank you very much for the thorough review and recognition of the opportunities of my research. Eben more, thank you very much for your advices.

Following your instructions, the abstract has been rewritten. Unnecessary parts are removed, and more results are included. The introduction and methodological section are reorganized and supplemented. An infographic about the process is added. Some questions about the method, sample representativeness, and limitations were included in the text;  I added more visibility to these items. Conclusions are supplemented and reorganized with a better emphasis on the implications. Since it is a holistic pilot study, I have to note a detailed presentation of all kinds of implications is limited.

New literature is involved, but the extensive literature review recommended in your review goes beyond the scope of the goals of the paper. I plan to expand the study for more detailed investigations; these will allow a targeted and systematic review of the literature.

I hope you find the corrections acceptable.

Reviewer 2 Report

 The study used a voluntary online survey designed for ranking the relative importance of sustainable development goals. The analysis used the Q-sort method for establishing factors of the opinions based on the responses of 123 Hungarian business students. The results show three patterns of thinking about the relative importance of the goals, including (1) global thinkers who prioritize planet-related goals, (2) pathfinders, and (3) human-centric students who prioritize people-related goals.

The manuscript is well written and interesting. In my opinion it should be regarded as a pilot study or pre-study. The result in itself does not say anything – just what 123 Hungarian students answered in a voluntary survey. However, the manuscript may be of importance if this study is followed up by other broader studies.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for the review and recognition of my work.

Based on all review reports, the text is improved and reorganized. The pilot nature and the limitations coming from the holistic approach of the study received a greater emphasis, as well as the future directions.

Of course, a more extensive sampling reduces some limitations, but the sample size is acceptable according to the methodology; most of the studies use even a smaller sample.

I hope that you can support the publication of my study.

Reviewer 3 Report

Very interesting research. The sample is small, but good enough for a pilot study. I could not find weak points. Congratulations!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for the review and recognition of my work.

Based on all review reports, the text is improved and reorganized.

I hope you can maintain your supportive opinion about the publication.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author corrected the main comments. I think that the current version of the article can be published in the journal

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

thank you very much again for your time and valuable comments. I am thankful for your supportive decision.

Language and grammar refinement will be performed before the publication.

 

Based on your comments, I believe that my further papers in this field can be of higher quality.