Moving towards the End of Gender Differences in the Habits of Use and Consumption of Mobile Video Games

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- The vast majority of the bibliography is composed of non-international publications which, I think, greatly hinders the scientific quality of the publication. I strongly recommend the authors investigate the contributions made by the international scientific community. A few examples are:

+ Hartmann, Tilo, Ingrid Möller, and Christina Krause. "Factors underlying male and female use of violent video games." New Media & Society 17.11 (2015): 1777-1794.

+ Hartmann, Tilo, and Christoph Klimmt. "Gender and computer games: Exploring females’ dislikes." Journal of computer-mediated communication 11.4 (2006): 910-931.

+ Hamlen, Karla R. "Re-examining gender differences in video game play: Time spent and feelings of success." Journal of Educational Computing Research 43.3 (2010): 293-308.

this last one in particular seems to be extremely relevant to your research. Also, consider removing the references to non-peer-reviewed publications, because they simply invalidate your research.

- The paper lacks a proper state-of-the-art section, which describes prior studies in the field

- The link to the questionnaire is malformed, and even if reconstructed it is not accessible without exposing the reviewer's identity (invalidating the blindness in the review process). Please, provide an open link. Also, please provide the questions also in English.

- Part of the text is in-between Table 2 and its caption.

- You mention the education level of the respondents, but no data is reported in the paper.

- In Figure 1 you mention DT, but it is never defined

- I don't understand the following sentence: "Although we can understand that fun is something taken for granted, video games, as a means of entertainment, entertain us and that is why we use them, which could explain these values" What do you mean? That since fun is an integral part of videogames, people do not play videogames to have fun? Even in this way, it does not make sense.

- Overall Figure 1 does not tell much, I think the authors could simply plot the actual distribution of each answer collected to have a more comprehensive view.

- "With regard to the form of communication, we find that Levene's F test is significant, 219 with p<.000," but p=.173, so according to your own saying the test is not significant

- I genuinely don't understand what you mean by "In other words, there is a greater number of women who do more than one activity apart from playing than men."

- I think that this conclusion is a bit far-fetched: "the female percentage is considerably higher than that of their male counterparts." Indeed, as you report just a few lines above, the difference is barely 6% for multiple activities and 2% for no other activity. So, what do you mean by "considerably higher"?

- Please, check this sentence "In the tests to find out if there are significant differences in terms of game preference, we found that both at home and when travelling, we found differences with p<0.05 and away from home p>0.05."

- The data availability statement is not given

- Since you acknowledge multiple times in your paper that the results you provide are valid only for Spain, I think you should stress it also in the abstract and the introduction section of your paper.

Minor comments:

for research[ 5–7In -> for research[ 5–7]. In

study [ 14]by Maya -> study [ 14] by Maya

populations[ 15 16]The incidence -> populations [ 15 16]. The incidence

school children[ 17,18].eSports events attendees[ 19]  -> school children [ 17,18]. eSports events attendees [ 19]

Author Response

First of all, thank you very much for your review, we appreciate the extensive indications that have allowed us to improve the presentation of the study.
On the first point, it is true that most of the bibliography is of a non-international nature and we have added several international references that improve the one presented in the first manuscript.
The state of the art has been improved by adding bibliography, marked in red in the references section. It was decided to go for more international articles in English to the detriment of those in Spanish.
The questionnaire has been translated and provided again, both in Appendix A and in Figshare, as indicated by the MDPI itself.
The first two tables have been replaced by graphs to improve the visual aspect.
Data on educational level are provided as part of the results, as well as age to provide the necessary context for the study, although this is not included in the table.
DT is a translation error, it is the standard deviation, the changes have been made at all the times it appeared.
Regarding "Although we can understand that fun is something taken for granted, video games, as a means of entertainment, entertain us and that is why we use them, which could explain these values" the main purpose of mentioning it is that, although fun is a main component of video games, it has low values because it is considered something implicit in video games. Nevertheless, we have decided to remove this phrase that can lead to misunderstandings and does not change the final result of the article.
With respect to Figure 1 (Figure 3 in the new manuscript), we believe that it provides sufficient value to keep it because, together with the previous figures and table, it allows us to get a general idea of the results, before going into the rest of the hypotheses that we will analyze in the following pages.
Regarding LEvenne's F. It is true that we say that the F is significant but not the test. The result of the F gives us that it is significant which is what allows us to choose whether the variances are or are not equal, and the result of the T-test is the one that gives as a non-significant result.
Regarding the sentence "In other words, there is a greater number of women who do more than one activity apart from playing than men" is a summary of the data presented in the previous sentence in which there is a greater number of women who do more than one activity apart from playing than men.
We agree that it is only "more" and not considerably.
In the phrase "In the tests to find out if there are significant differences in terms of game preference, we found that both at home and when traveling, we found differences with p<0.05 and away from home p>0.05" we have corrected it in the new paper to make it clear that it refers to the previous tables 7, 8 and 9.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper present the result of questionnaire about use and consumption of mobile video games.

Unfortunately the link provided in the test do not allow the access to the questionnaire. The link is  inadequate to be inserted in the text of a paper.

In order to assert that the precovid situation is different the authors should compare the results of similar results made before covid. In fact, the authors compare the current situation with what each respondent believes to be behavior before covid. This result is belied by the personal feeling.

All result are presented using several tables, these have little impact in readers. 

A correlation between the different extracted data should be provided.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for the review, as it has made substantial improvements to the article.

Regarding the first point, I agree that access was not enabled due to an error in the permissions. A section for consulting the questionnaire and data in Figshare has been enabled at the end of the article, as recommended by MDPI in the corresponding section. Also we have added Appendix A to consult the questionnaire with an english traducttion.

Regarding the comparison of the results with pre-covid studies, we have made the necessary changes to make the comparison with similar studies much clearer. On the one hand, we have compared the data obtained with the data provided by the respondents, which is the most reliable data, and with the data from the Spanish Video Games Association, whose latest study is pre-covid. Also we have compared with an important study in the area, the new comparaison with the data is marked in red. We believe that this is the most reliable comparison as our data is limited to Spain, something that we have made much clearer in the new version.

In the presentation of the results, the first two tables have been modified to visually improve the data. We think taht the resto f the data have to be in a table because it allows t osee the data fast.

The analysis carried out has allowed us to treat the data individually for each item and also to treat the hypotheses in such a way that we have different ways of dealing with them, something that enriches the study. We have added a paragraph to Hypothesis 1 explaining the rationale for doing so as we believe it allows us to better understand all sides of consumption habits.

We have added references in the conclusions that allow us to support what we mentioned in the first part of this point. In addition, with the changes mentioned above, we believe that the conclusions drawn are better supported.

The level of English was improved with an external and independent corrector to improve the quality of the article.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors did a great job improving their contribution, therefore I think the paper can now be accepted.

Author Response

Thank you very much for all the suggested changes to improve the article. It was a pleasure to improve the article before it was published.

Reviewer 2 Report

highlights in the text the changes compared to the previous version

Author Response

Thank you very much for all the suggested changes to improve the article. It was a pleasure to improve the article before it was published.