Exploring Health, Safety, and Mental Health Practices in the Saudi Construction Sector—Knowledge, Awareness, and Interventions: A Semi-Structured Interview
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is a well written article that discusses health, safety, and mental health practices in the Saudi Arabian construction sector. The paper is well organized and list four primary aims. The qualitative methods are well described. The organization of the paper is appropriate. It has several tables but no figures. Appendix A contains several extensive tables. The manuscript discusses the difficulty of addressing mental health in construction and points out the increased burden on migrant workers.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsData Presentation and Clarity Issues
Table 1 shows sector size as "large," which lacks context. The authors should clarify what constitutes "large" in their study context and provide appropriate benchmarks or ranges for sector size classifications.
The manuscript references page numbers of transcripts throughout the analysis, but these transcripts are not appended to the manuscript, making these references meaningless to readers.
Sampling and Research Design Misalignment
A fundamental issue exists between the stated research objectives and sample composition. The research questions explicitly mention capturing "employees' perspectives," yet the participant sample consists predominantly of managerial workers. If the study aims to understand employee perspectives on the research topic, the sample should include direct workers and frontline employees in addition to managerial staff. The current sampling strategy undermines the study's ability to answer its stated research questions and limits the generalizability of findings. The authors should either revise their research questions to reflect the managerial focus of their sample or expand their participant recruitment to include non-managerial employees.
Methodological Rigor in Data Analysis
The reliability verification process for the coding analysis is insufficient. Using a single senior academic to review coding does not adequately establish analytical reliability. A more robust approach would involve multiple independent coders conducting parallel analysis with calculation and reporting of intercoder agreement scores.
Thematic Analysis Development
The theme development process lacks methodological rigor typical of quality thematic analysis. While the authors mention open coding of transcripts and grouping codes, there is no evidence of higher-order coding processes such as axial coding that would demonstrate how themes emerged from and relate to the initial codes. The manuscript should clearly describe the analytical progression from initial codes to final themes, including any intermediate analytical steps and the rationale for theme consolidation or refinement.
Research Question Integration
The manuscript lacks clear connections between the research questions and interview questions, making it difficult to assess whether the data collection approach adequately addresses the research objectives. The authors should explicitly demonstrate how their interview questions were designed to elicit responses relevant to each research question.
Furthermore, the analysis presentation would benefit from reorganization around the research questions rather than discussing themes independently. The current structure makes it challenging to understand how the findings specifically answer the posed research questions. Each theme should be explicitly connected to relevant research questions, demonstrating how the findings contribute to answering the study's central inquiries.
Recommendation
The manuscript requires major revision to address these methodological and presentation issues. The authors should reconsider their sampling strategy to align with research objectives, strengthen their analytical reliability procedures, clarify their thematic development process, and reorganize their findings presentation to directly address their research questions. These revisions are essential for ensuring the study's methodological rigor and the meaningfulness of its contributions to the field.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors
Many thanks for the opportunity to offer technical comments on your manuscript. To help improve quality and appeal to its target audience, consider the following;
i. Abstract will require further improvement both in structure and grammar. In addition, the use of the work domestic workers tend to skew the thinking towards those who perform duty within household. This need closer look in my opinion also.
ii. Section 2.1: For better flow rephrase this part. Possibly refer to other published work by Safety or MDPI Ethic statement for guide. In addition how long were these participants allowed to decide their willingness to participate in the study?
iii. 2.3 Participants; The typology of the participants negate the study title and aim. There was the assumption that frontline workers were considered in the study as compared to safety officers and managers stated. The former in practice, are considered to stay much longer onsite under the climatic condition described in the section 1. This gap need addressing moving forward
iv. Result: Generally it is still not clear what is the meant by domestics workers in this setting. Authors will need to provide clarity regards this subject all through the manuscript.
v. Section 3.2: The content read as description of how the analysis occurred. It will be better to be housed in the methodology section or refine to achieve the intended goal.
vi. There is need to ensure the entire work align with each other and avoid introducing new subject as the work progresses. Overall, the entire work will require further proofread to help eliminate redundant statements and typos.
Best wishes
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageFurther development of tense and structural flow will help improve the manuscript quality. As it stand there are several redundant text that impact on the work entirely.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript entitled “Exploring Health, Safety, and Mental Health Practices in the Saudi Construction Sector: Knowledge, Awareness, and Interventions: a semi-structured interview” proposes the analysis of perceptions about mental health of workers in the construction sector in Saudi Arabia through interviews. The research addresses a topic that has shown growing interest in the literature in recent years. The manuscript is well written, however, in my opinion, there are some deficiencies that must be corrected before the article can be considered for publication in this journal.
COMMENT 1) INTRODUCTION: The text in this section is well written, however, the introductory section should be clear and objective, informing the reader what they will find throughout the manuscript. Therefore, I suggest that this section be restructured. This section should focus on providing a brief contextualization of the topic, delimit the research gap, the objective, and highlight the novelty of the research. Conceptualizations and in-depth analyzes of the topic should be placed in a Literature Review section.
COMMENT 2) LITERATURE REVIEW: I suggest creating a literature review section. The literature review aims to indicate the state-of-the-art on the subject. The references presented are quantitatively insufficient, not allowing the development of a sufficient theoretical basis to support the manuscript. Therefore, it is necessary to delve further into the methodologies and results obtained in previous studies. Similar research has not only been carried out in Saudi Arabia, but also in other places around the world. As well as substantiating the most important concepts for understanding the research. It is not possible to guarantee a solid theoretical background without broadly discussing the results of previous research on the subject. 22 references were cited only in the Introduction section, however, none of them had their content properly explored.
COMMENT 3) REFERENCES: References must be improved. This topic has been widely discussed in the literature, providing a sufficient amount of reference material for authors. Therefore, authors must dedicate themselves to searching for other references whose results support their conclusions, allowing comparison between studies carried out in different contexts.
COMMENT 4) SAMPLE SIZE: The authors report that the sample consisted of 30 participants. Although this is a qualitative analysis study, given that the results are directly related to the perception of these professionals, it is necessary to indicate the reason why this quantity was selected. Is the participation of 30 professionals considered significant in the context of this research? In other words, can 30 professionals represent the perceptions of an entire category of professionals? This is a relevant point to avoid any risk of bias.
COMMENT 5) LANGUAGE: The interviews were conducted in English. As the authors mentioned, language is an issue considering the high rate of immigrant workers. How did the authors assess the impact of conducting the interview in English on the clarity of the results? In other words, couldn’t conducting the interview in English, in itself, be a barrier to obtaining more accurate responses from participants?
COMMENT 6) PARTICIPANTS’ DEMOGRAPHICS: The authors report that all 30 participants are male. Why did no women participate in the study? When it comes to mental health and health in general, it is a consensus that women face different challenges and pressures in the professional environment. Is it pertinent to extrapolate the results found (only from the male point of view) to all construction workers?
COMMENT 7) COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: The authors indicate that 10 professionals are migrant workers, but I did not find information about the nationality of these professionals. The perceptions of each professional are directly related to their experiences and the cultural diversity of the countries of origin of these professionals, therefore, this is relevant information in the context of this study.
COMMENT 8) LINES 209-210: “The distribution of age revealed that most of the participants were above 30 years (n = 19),...”
This information does not match the data presented in Table 1, where only 1 participant is under 30 years old.
COMMENT 9) LINES 215-216: “...which only one were migrant, and diplomas (n = 6) With 6 of the participants being migrant workers”.
I would like to ask the authors to be more specific about the meaning of “diplomas”. In some countries, having a bachelor's degree means the same as having a diploma.
COMMENT 10) LINES 216-219: “In addition, the participants were again divided into three distinct roles constituted of managers and executives (n = 7) Only one was migrant, safety specialists, professional, Inspector, and officer (n = 12) which one was migrant, and technical or workers' roles (n = 11) among them, 8 were migrant workers”.
Please review the wording of this sentence. Improper punctuation and the use of capital letters in the middle of the sentence make it difficult to interpret.
COMMENT 11) TABLE 1: I request that authors clearly indicate what “Sector Size” is and what criteria were used to classify participant performance into one of the three indicated categories (Small, Medium or Large).
COMMENT 12) The authors need to compare responses across different groups more clearly, as they did when analyzing perceptions among domestic workers and migrants. For example, are there significant differences in response between workers in executive roles and workers in technical roles? Did the bachelor's and postgraduate courses allow employees to have a clearer understanding of the subject? These are questions that must be answered by research.
COMMENT 13) It would be interesting if the questions used in the interviews were made available. The authors cite the subjective responses of some participants through exact transcription. However, in other cases they cite an alleged classification. For example:
LINES 344-346: Awareness of health and safety protocols was reported to be relatively high, with most participants rating it as robust and a smaller group considering it moderate for both types of workers”.
LINE 348: “I think in rate, it is 7 as we have a health and safety program...”
How was this ranking made? What scale is used? From 1 to 10? What is the relationship between “relatively high,” “robust,” and “moderate” in the context of this question? The presentation of the questionnaire and its criteria could answer these questions.
COMMENT 14) I suggest that the authors explain throughout the text how to interpret the content of Appendix A, in order to help a potential reader who is not familiar with this type of result.
COMMENT 15) DISCUSSION SECTION: The discussion section, in addition to deepening the analysis of the obtained results, should be used so that authors can promote the comparison of their results with those obtained by previously published studies. In my opinion, in much of this section, the authors dedicated themselves more to a simple literature review, which should have been done in a specific section at the beginning of the article, than to discussing the results more broadly, comparing them with other research. Are the results found in agreement with previously published research? This is an answer that must be provided to the reader.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsNice paper! Congratulations!
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging feedback. We truly appreciate it.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsWhile the authors have addressed most of the concerns, the following are not addressed adequately.
1) A fundamental issue exists between the stated research objectives and sample composition. Previously the research questions explicitly mentioned "employees' perspectives.” The authors mentioned that they have used “employees and leadership” instead of a generic term “employees.” Though the research questions have been revised, the truth is only one-third of the participants are employees the rest are holding managerial positions. The Results section has not been updated. There should be specific distinction between the two groups.
2) The authors are requested to present the results of the interviews from the two separate groups separately and then present an inter group comparison.
3) The recommendations based on the results could be separated based on the responses of these two groups. Combining the responses to the two groups to generate the recommendations seem to not make the most of the collected data.
Author Response
Comment 1:
We thank the reviewer for raising this important point. In our study, the term employees is used in its broader sense to include both front-line workers and top management. To avoid ambiguity, we have revised the aims, objectives, and research questions to make this meaning explicit. We also emphasise that this is not a comparison study but an exploratory one designed to inform future intervention planning. The limitation that only one-third of participants were front-line staff is acknowledged in the manuscript. lines (66-79) , and (680-695).
Comment 2:
We thank the reviewer for the comment. We wish to clarify that this study is not a comparison study; its purpose is exploratory, aiming to understand perspectives across different positions to inform future intervention planning. While we included both front-line employees and top management, only one-third of participants were front-line staff, and differences in education and language made it challenging to recruit more front-line workers. This limitation has been acknowledged in the manuscript. line (680-695).
Comment 3:
We clarify to the above comments that this study is exploratory and not a comparison study; its aim is to gather insights from both front-line employees and top management to inform future intervention planning. Accordingly, the recommendations are intentionally based on combined insights from both groups. Where role-specific perspectives were observed, these have been highlighted in the discussion to ensure they appropriately inform the recommendations. We have also revised the section slightly to make this clarification clearer. lines (698-701).
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors
Many thanks for responding to my earlier comments.
I am satisfied with the updated version and happy to recommend your work to be accepted in the resent format.
Best wishes
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your kind feedback and support. We greatly appreciate it.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors---
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We thank for time and feedback. Although no specific comments were provided, we have revised the manuscript and checked the sections on lines 66–79, 680–695, and 698–701 for clarity and consistency.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for addressing the comments.
