Two Approaches to Analyze Whether Citizens’ National Identity Is Affected by Country, Age, and Political Orientation—A Fuzzy Eco-Apostle Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article aims at the presentation of how new methodologies, applied to the study of national identity, could improve our understanding of this phenomenon.  It does not present a clear research question, however, that organizes the flow of the paper. Thus, and despite the title or the article, it is now quite clear is the real objective is descriptive: to show how different methodologies will unfold the different dimensions of national identity; or if it presents a causal structure, aiming to understand how national identity varies according to countries, age and ideology. In the first case, the article should had focused more on how each methodology would improve our understanding of national identity’s dimensionality, without the need for co-variates. In the second case, the article should have included more sophisticated and multivariate methods of analysis.

The presentation of results, and the extent to which the article could have an added value, is constrained by the literature chosen and presented at the beginning. So, the authors focus on the dichotomy ethnic-civic, including also a re-elaboration based on the contribution by Medrano. That is, the authors used new methodologies to try to confirm a dimensionality already proven to fall short. Instead, they could have been more exploratory in their application of these new methodologies. Or they may have included other literature with further dimension’s proposal such as: ascribed vs achieved identity; instrumental vs cultural identity, etc.

In general, the literature review is limited and disorganized in its presentation.

Methods are presented in very technical way, which is fine if that is the spirit of this publication, but not necessarily needed for the readers to understand the net contribution of the technique to the study of national identity.

Co-variates are not well justified based on the literature about national identity. Also, the analysis of these co-variates based on contingency tables and odds ratios is very poor, taking into consideration the complex nature of national identity. Particularly the choosing of years 2003 and 2013 is not justified at all for the analysis. Apparently, the same results could have been obtained with either of the waves. What role does time plays in the models?

Finally, the comments on why countries fit into different types of national identity classification, at the end of the article, is also too limited. Given the complexity of national identity in each country, and the limitation of the analyses presented on the article regarding co-variates, it could be probably better to take off co-variates, including countries from the analysis… At it is now overs implies how national identity unfolds in different countries and ignores the baste literature on each of them.

To summarize, I would recommend: taking off the second part of the article based on co-variates; focus on the first part regarding how different methodologies could improved our understanding of the dimensionality of national identity; explore the dimensionality of national identity beyond ethnic-civic and Medrano’s models, either to come up with new typologies, or by including more literature with other proposals to test; maybe be less technical in the presentation of the methodology, and be more detailed in explaining what the results of each methodology adds to what we already know; organize better the literature review: organize around a research question (that could be exploratory); and, finally, work on a research question that gives unity to the text.

English language must be improved.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The abstract should be improved (do not say "various' methods have been used).
2. Line 28; What is a "polite company"?
3. Line 30 has grammar problems.
4. The discussion does not have a clear focus and it could be shortened.
5. The study limitations should be discussed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your contribution. I think the method and the results are interesting. I would like to recommend minor revisions for your manuscript. There are my general notes below and a few things you can consider:

1.  The "two approaches" on your title are not clearly mentioned in the abstract. Throughout the paper, Fuzzy Eco-Apostle Model has been mentioned as the main novel approach. You need to clarify the these approaches preferably in the abstract, or, in the introduction to avoid confusions. It seems then there are three approaches in your paper but that doesn't match with your title. Regarding these two approaches, you may need further clarification whether they are novel (or how novel). Based on what I read on the related chapter, for the appraoch in section 6.1, you studied some previous research and applied the approach, and, for the approach in 6.2 it is not clear. 

2. Copy: "The study uses various methodological approaches to analyze national identity using the 9 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) national identity module in 2003 and 2013." 
I think this sentence is incomplete in some way. Maybe rephrase the bit "...module data presented in 2003 and 2013."?

3. I think the language is fine and punctuations are well made. The only thing I noticed is that there are some spacing missing after some citations.

4. The literature review is comprehensive and references are proper.

5. Figures 1 and 3 are not very readable. You may consider some rework on their resolution or size.

6. Recommendation: To add more educational value, you may consider expanding the maths and algorithmic steps for your main method in chapter 5. What programming language or if any toolboxes/packages have you used? Are there any Github links or codes available? These could help people wanting to study your work in much more detail.

7. Conclusions are well made. There are further interpretations from the results and future work has been mentioned in detail. This is one of the few papers I have reviewed that did not simply replicate the abstract for this section.

Kind Regards

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the article “Two Approaches to Analyze whether Citizens’ National Identity is Affected by Country, Age, and Political Orientation. A Fuzzy Eco-Apostle Model”. The article is very interesting and quite engaging, contributing to a new perspective on the issue of national identity among citizens. The authors used several research approaches and methods in their study. First, based on an explanatory factor analysis on the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) from 2003 and 2013, they applied a Fuzzy Hybrid Analysis to delineate clusters of citizens according to ethnic and civic dimensions of national identity. Then they used a national identity extended eco-apostle model that aims to reduce the potential blurred area when researchers determine credentialists, post nationalists, and civic and ethnic oriented citizens. I appreciate this part and consider it the biggest strength of this paper, adding a novelty factor and proving scientific soundness.

Overall, the subject is corrected attributed to this section of the journal “Computing and Artificial Intelligence”, special issue “Applications of Fuzzy Optimization” by using the Fuzzy set theory and Fuzzy Hybrid Analysis in order to accomplish the aim of the study: “to provide a new methodology for social science research in the context of national identity, complementing other previous prestigious studies” (lines 53-54).

I want to congratulate the authors for the quality of the article, which I consider to be well structured in the submitted form, and I believe that the paper can be accepted in its current form.

I have only two small recommendations:

• the first is related to the quality of the two ternary diagrams of fuzzy clustering on the civic and ethnic dimensions of national identity (positioned after line 293)- they should be slightly larger to be better visualized
• the second is related to the complete presentation of reference no. 54 (line 742) - Jones, T.O.; Sasser, W.E. Why Satisfied Customers Defect. 1-12 that lacks some elements, i. e., the year.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have not further comments to make.