Secondary School Students’ Interest in STEM Careers in Qatar

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I enjoyed reading this manuscript. The concerns facing Qatar in STEM are being seen in different variations worldwide. It is important that this issue of under-enrollment and under-preparation in STEM continues to be explored and brought to the surface for discussion.

Overall, I thought this was written well. I have a few thoughts/critiques:

Line 44 - there is an extra "an" at the end

The introduction was solid in setting up the purpose of the study.

Lines 61-63 - Is this more dire a situation in Qatar than other nations? This appears to be a global trend. 

Section 1.2 - There is a noticeable difference in Qatar in higher education. Comparing the data from different international jurisdictions is helpful for illustrative purposes. 

Lines 110-121 - Thank you for highlighting gender equity issues. How does this compare to grad rates in non-STEM fields?  

Line 128 - This is very sobering data.

Section 1.4 - It is clear how STEM is being operationalized in this paper. 

Line 168 - Should "great" be "greater"?

Line 174 - Missing "in" between scholarship / STEM

Section 1.4.1 covers many factors that influence students to pursue STEM. What about looking at the ages when students were introduced to STEM or when they developed STEM identities? This may be worth adding to your implications. 

Table 1 (p. 7) - The numbers in the table don't match what is written up above. I feel like I missed something. And Average age should not be listed twice. 

Lines 480 - 482 - Don't these two factors contradict each other? (Age and grade level) 

Para starting on Line 575 - What about looking at when students take these classes? Could early exposure to STEM play a role?

Line 616 - Pre-college levels, including as early as in primary grades

Author Response

Response to the comments by Reviewer 1:

I enjoyed reading this manuscript. The concerns facing Qatar in STEM are being seen in different variations worldwide. It is important that this issue of under-enrollment and under-preparation in STEM continues to be explored and brought to the surface for discussion.

Overall, I thought this was written well.

• Thank you for these encouraging notes.

 

I have a few thoughts/critiques:

Line 44 - there is an extra "an" at the end

• This was revised with the omission of the word “an”.

 

The introduction was solid in setting up the purpose of the study.

• Thank you.

 

Lines 61-63 - Is this more dire a situation in Qatar than other nations? This appears to be a global trend. 

• We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. It is true that this is a global phenomenon. To make this relevant to the context of Qatar, we revised the text to reflect significance of the study as it focuses on Qatari nationals. The sentence was re-written as “An important contribution that this study has for policymaking and scholarly knowledge lies in its emphasis on the importance of fostering young Qataris’ interest in STEM.”

 

Section 1.2 - There is a noticeable difference in Qatar in higher education. Comparing the data from different international jurisdictions is helpful for illustrative purposes. 

• This is a valid point and comparison of local and international data would certainly enrich this study. Unfortunately, we were constrained by word count limits, especially if we were to compare data from different world regions such as the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Far East.

 

Lines 110-121 - Thank you for highlighting gender equity issues. How does this compare to grad rates in non-STEM fields?

• Gender-related differences in STEM fields of study and careers vary from one country to another and even within the same country. In our study, we included Figures 2 and 3 to illustrate the huge gap between Qatar University male and female graduates. Unfortunately, data for other institutions of higher education in the country is not readily accessible based on our previous and recent research. Access to institutional data here is treated with a great deal of secrecy and remains a real challenge to researchers.

 

Line 128 - This is very sobering data.

• We agree the stats are alarming, especially given that Qatar seeks to turn into a knowledge-based society where science, technology, engineering and mathematics are in high demand.

 

Section 1.4 - It is clear how STEM is being operationalized in this paper. 

• We assume the reviewer meant “It is [NOT] clear how STEM is being operationalized in this paper.” In our study, we identified STEM as a generic term that encompasses the domains of science, technology, engineering, and math (Introduction). In addition, we employed Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory as a model to operationalize STEM and as a lens for examining students’ attitudes towards and interests in STEM.

 

Line 168 - Should "great" be "greater"?

• Thank you for alerting us to this mistake. The word was revised and changed to “greater”.

 

Line 174 - Missing "in" between scholarship / STEM

• Thank you for this as well. We added the missing “in”.

 

Section 1.4.1 covers many factors that influence students to pursue STEM. What about looking at the ages when students were introduced to STEM or when they developed STEM identities? This may be worth adding to your implications. 

• Thank you for this suggestion. Indeed, this would enrich the analysis of our study, which focused on students in grades 11 and 12 (approximate ages 15/16 to 17/18). It needs to be said, however, that this deserves either a separate study on its own or a study that compares students of different age groups. Looking at students in different age groups will have to take into consideration their specific ages, their different cognitive abilities, genders, school type among others factors. Here again, it is unfortunate that we were limited by the scope and space constraints.

 

Table 1 (p. 7) - The numbers in the table don't match what is written up above. I feel like I missed something. And Average age should not be listed twice.

• The paragraph above the table describes the whole sample used in the survey (n = 1,505 students) while the table shows the sample used in the analysis (n= 632 students) after removing outliers and missing data cases. We tried to clarify this further by revising the last sentence at the end of the first paragraph following the section “2.2. Procedure and sample”

Moreover, the ‘average age’ at the end of the table was removed.

 

Lines 480 - 482 - Don't these two factors contradict each other? (Age and grade level) 

• We clarified this point in further detail, showing that age has a negative effect when looking at the sample as a whole. We also included our interpretation (lines 490-494).

 

Para starting on Line 575 - What about looking at when students take these classes? Could early exposure to STEM play a role?

• In our survey, we didn’t ask about this information. The survey questions were targeting current grade levels. Because we don’t have concrete data to verify this, it would be useful to conduct a future study that examines whether exposure to STEM in class is a predictor of student interest in STEM careers.

 

Line 616 - Pre-college levels, including as early as in primary grades

• We were not sure what was required of us to do here. If we get it right, then we can say that in our study pre-college levels encompasses students in primary, preparatory and secondary stages of education.

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the writing and research is good. It would be interesting to have a little more discussion at the end on the findings. Being unfamiliar with this region of the world, I would have liked more cultural context. Also define acronyms like GCC for readers outside of the Gulf area. It was fascinating to me regarding the Qatar rentier culture and maybe a reason for the lack of interest in STEM fields. More on this discussion might be enlightening. I also wonder why female interest in STEM is so much higher than male interest. This is quite different than western nations, such as the United States. Is this also related to the Qatar culture and government jobs? I'm just curious why it is so different. More discussion on that point might be interesting. Maybe some of these issues are beyond the scope of the research, but would provide some valuable context. Overall I found it to be an interesting paper and research and think it adds some valuable knowledge to the literature. There are some differences in some spelling that I am unfamiliar with but assume is related to this region of the world and British influences.

Author Response

Response to the comments by Reviewer 2:

1. The quality of the writing and research is good. It would be interesting to have a little more discussion at the end on the findings.
2. Being unfamiliar with this region of the world, I would have liked more cultural context.

• We thought it would make sense to respond to points (a) and (b) above in combination with point (c) below since all three are related. Please see our response under (c) below. Thank you.

 

Also define acronyms like GCC for readers outside of the Gulf area.

• We also included the names of the six GCC countries (line 43).

 

1. It was fascinating to me regarding the Qatar rentier culture and maybe a reason for the lack of interest in STEM fields. More on this discussion might be enlightening. I also wonder why female interest in STEM is so much higher than male interest. This is quite different than western nations, such as the United States. Is this also related to the Qatar culture and government jobs? I'm just curious why it is so different. More discussion on that point might be interesting.

• Two points raised here: (i) Qatar’s rentier culture and (ii) females’ high interest in STEM.
• The comment related to Qatar’s rentier culture is exactly right. This is related to points (a) and (b) above. The impact of culture is very obvious in Qatar and the larger GCC region. We expanded on the notion of rentier culture in the GCC context, relating this to preference for public sector employment. Relevant references were included.
• We also added information about females’ higher interest in STEM compared to their male counterparts, stating the main factors leading to this.

 

Maybe some of these issues are beyond the scope of the research, but would provide some valuable context. Overall I found it to be an interesting paper and research and think it adds some valuable knowledge to the literature.

• Thank you. We would have loved to explore and analyze additional data but we were constrained by the scope of the journal. We could, for example, have examined the social and cultural influences that determined students career pathways in Qatar.

 

There are some differences in some spelling that I am unfamiliar with but assume is related to this region of the world and British influences.

• This is very true indeed. We checked once more and revised accordingly.

 

Please check that all references are relevant to the contents of the manuscript. (There are 67 in references list, while in text citation shows 69, there’re 2 references missing – or repeated?)

• Thank you for alerting us to this. We revised all references and ensured relevant references were included and the citations updated. 68 references were cited in the main text and the same were cited in the ‘References’ list.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx