The Effect of Group Work on Expressive-Artistic Activities for the Emotional Regulation of University Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your dedication and interest in continuing to contribute knowledge to the emotional and social dimension of university students as future professionals. 

Attached is the document with the questions to be reviewed. 

Sincerely, 

the reviewer

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting research about the influence of emotional regulation during group work in the expressive-artistic activities.

The research is carefully presented as well as the discussion.

However, there are some minor issues that can be corrected and create a better paper.

Methodologically, authors have opted to use an exploratory approach, with a quantitative (descriptive and inferential) methodology. This is correct, but in the future we would advise to go a little further and create correlations between the different variables. This would improve considerably the research.

The instrument used was the questionnaire AIRE (Adaptative Instrument for Regulation of Emotions).

Although this is a well-known questionnaire in the area of the current research, authors should explain in more detail its content namely the evaluation scale (minimum and maximum values). This is missing and if a reader doesn’t know this, he will not understand final conclusions and final averages.

Concerning the sample, 69 second-year students were gathered in 3 practical classes. It would be interesting to state which classes and if they had the same teachers or different teachers, because this situation may arise different behaviours  among the students.

It would also be important to explain why authors choose the second year and not the first or the third years (if the course is three years) and the total number of students in the second year (the total universe).

Finally, references are in a good quantity and adequate for the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

General remarks:

The overall manuscript contains relevant information for existing literature. One aspect that you can focus on is the overall writing style. Some sentences are odd because I carefully assume you apply non-Native sentence structures to the English language. It does not work. I would also suggest to search for a few best practices in your field so you have high quality examples of how a manuscript should look. This will help you finding more common phrasings. In addition, you have to be careful with intensifiers. These do not add anything relevant to your message. If you feel like you need to add these to your sentences, you need to work on your argument. Keep in mind that a paragraph is at least three sentences. This is not always the case in your manuscript. The overall poor quality of writing diminishes the potential it has; however, I am of the opinion that the issues I spot should be filtered out before submission and not during the peer review process. Moreover, you need to go over your comma use. This is not always applied correctly.

Specific remarks:

p.1.5/6             “represents the main purpose in the higher education stage” à This is oddly phrased. You mean that the goal of higher education is the development of basic and professional skills? If so, write that.

p.1.6/7             This does not follow logically after the first sentence. In addition, “great” is an intensifier and unnecessary for your story.

p.1.7/8             This also does not follow logically after the first sentences. Can you create more coherence?

p.abstract        n needs to be in italics. Moreover, the phrasing “the instrument used was..” is odd. Restructure the sentence so it is easier to read. Furthermore, the abstract is fragmented (the sentences standalone). You need to add signaling words to guide the reader through your work.

p.1.11              The results do not show anything. Assign correct verbs to the topic of your sentences.

p.1.12              Colleagues = peers.

p.1.14              “completely” = redundant.

p.1.16              This is an open door. What external factors? Make sure you wrap up your abstract rather than leaving questions unanswered.

p.1.25              Hyphen in “com-plex” can be deleted. There are more words hyphenated that should not be hyphenated. Check the remainder of your work for this.

p.1.28              By whom? This requires more elaboration, especially because strategy use is a complex concept. One might have knowledge about them, but that is separate from (a) the quality of the strategies, (b) the implementation, and (c) adjustments.

p.1.44              “in the long term” à Restructure the sentence.

p.intro             Create more coherence. You present the information in a fragmented way, partly because the paragraphs aren’t paragraphs, but also due to the lack of signaling words and/or repetition of information. The concept of interest are relevant; however, your rationale is unclear.

p.2.67/68         Your aim can be more specific, especially the verb “to realize”. What do you mean with this? Moreover, I am wondering why you use the plural form of “regulation” but the singular form of “process”. This aim evokes many questions. In particular, it is unclear after your incoherent introduction.

p.2.73              Write number up until 20 completely. Also apply this to the remainder of your manuscript.

p.2.89/90         What do you mean with “adapted from the cognitive style group”?

p.2.93/94         Restructuring of the sentence is necessary.

p.3.97              The test was applied? Do you mean administered?

p.3.98              The questionnaire was filled individually in… Incorrect. The AIRE (you do not have to add questionnaire to it; it is self-explanatory based on your introduction of the abbreviation) was individually administered via Google Drive Online Forms. You can write things more concisely and, above all, correctly.

p.3.102/103     You also mentioned you will use inferential statistics. I miss that information here.

p.3.Tables       Place the SD in italics. In a similar vein, In table 2 you need to make the N a lower case letter and place it in italics (it is not your complete sample, thus “n”). Also apply this to the remainder of your manuscript.

p.3.114            The questionnaire does not ask anything. Select a suitable verb.

p.5/132–138    The subscales in the questionnaire should be discussed in the methodology. You mentioned that the questionnaire has four sections, but how does that relate to the information you present here?

p.Discussion   This also needs more coherence. For example, what is the function of the text in rows 156–158?

p.7.208–212    Other GW tasks such as?

p.7.214            “Allowed us to know” à Look up a more suitable alternative. This is not how you wrap up a manuscript. Moreover, the external factors forms—again—a source of confusion. What kind of external factors are you talking about?

p.references    There are inconsistencies in your reference list. Please check.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article could be published with minor changes such as:

- wording of the hypothesis after the wording of the objective, at the end of the introduction.

- Before "Results", describe the data analysis (descriptive analysis and bivariate correlations) that has been carried out to obtain the results.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf