The Effect of Leadership Style on Firefighters Well-Being during an Emergency

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study “The effect of leadership style in firefighters well-being during an emergency” raises a topic of great interest from a theoretical point of view, as well as offering practical implications.

Although previous research supports that an empowering leadership would contribute to the well-being of employees, reducing stress levels, the results obtained in this study support that a directive style of leadership can be more positive in emergency situations, such as interventions firefighters, especially in subordinates with high previous stress levels.

From the methodological perspective, the authors brilliantly and simply solve the construction of an experimental design, both for the way of generating two groups according to leadership style, and for simulating a situation of danger and stress. Although this situation is not the real environment of a fire extinction, it manages to reach a very acceptable ecological degree. This fact turns one of the study's weaknesses into its strength.

Taking this and other limitations noted by the authors into account, the results may contribute to improving the well-being of professionals who work in emergency situations.

Finally, it is emphasized that the methodology used in the study is described in detail, favoring its replication in this or other emergency media.

For all these reasons, its publication is considered to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in this field.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the paper is pertinent and current. The keywords of the topic and its relationships are well chosen.

The abstract has all the fundamental parts to the understanding of the study.

The introduction has the fundamental parts to understand the pertinence and objectives of the research. The literature review is focused excellently on the keywords of the topic and which are the object of study.

The methodology and statistical methods followed are appropriate. 

The conclusions are well elaborated and respond to the proposed objectives.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

There are some significant issues which must be addressed (see below) in this manuscript. If you have data that in your research that addresses these issues, please include. If you don't, you should present arguments why those issues are not important / included in the research or forego publishing until you are ready to present results that don't leave the reader with more questions than answers. 

There are sever other minor revisions included in the marked up PDF. 

With your study design and hypotheses, I'm seeing several potential confounding variables. #1 Leadership ability. #2 Gender. #3 Length of service of participants. 

For #1 - If you had repeated the experiments with your leaders switching to the other style you would fix most of that. 

For #2 - Were there an equal number of men and women as leaders? Was there any difference between the two? 

For #3 - Was there a difference in perception between participants based on their length of service? Older, more entrenched members may respond better to one style (directive my guess) than the other. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for addressing my comments. I believe that additional research could be done that may offer potential clues as to what influenced the results of your study but you've done an adequate job of detailing the shortcomings of your research design within the manuscript. 

A future study on this topic may want to include semi-structured interviews to get a clearer picture of what's going on. 

 

Author Response

We are very grateful that you consider that this new version is already of quality to be published in this journal. We agree with the need for a future study to include interviews and this suggestion was included in the limitations and directions for future studies section: "Furthermore, to get a clearer picture of what’s going on during an emergency, future studies should include qualitative data collected with semi-structural interviews."

Best regards,
Authors