Maritime Undergraduate Students: Career Expectations and Choices
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to revise the paper: Maritime undergraduate students: Career expectations and choices
I think the paper is well written and interesting. I have, however, a few comments for the authors:
The paper shows an interesting case and describes well the context of Romania. However, it is not clear to me what are the theoretical foundation of the study. I would recommend that you clearly describe this in the paper (perhaps even with a section in itself, or at least well explained in the introduction), so it is clear how the paper contributes to a scholarly stream.
Empirically, the authors present descriptive statistics that, while interesting, I am not sure how much they make a contribution. The authors claim in the introduction that they would compare they data from the survey with data from other databases, and this would require more sophisticated methods to check if differences are statistically significant, but I can´t find any of this in the paper.
I highly encourage you to do that, as that is a good way to make a more relevant contribution to the field, and it could enrich the conclusions you can extract.
As a minor thing, the sentence: “The questionnaires were printed on paper and passed 234 to students to complete it anonymously and the two headquarters of the university., is the last “and” a typo?
Other small typos are in other sentences, for example: “In Fact, students 322 often tend to plan their professional lives in other trades as well”.
Good luck with your project!
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The issues understood by the authors are certainly interesting, but the article in the presented form requires considerable work.
In the literature on the subject (and in the introduction in particular), little emphasis has been placed on the relationship between the presented issues and sustainable development. Moreover, in the literature on the subject there are few studies on the motives for choosing studies at maritime universities in individual regions of the world, it would be good to draw attention to the specificity of the didactic offer for candidates for maritime professions in Romania, compared to other countries, in the theoretical part of the article.
In the methodological part, first of all, more detailed research problems should be formulated as well as information on the theoretical foundations of the questionnaire used, and the degree of meeting the psychometric requirements (at least reliability) should be included.
Then, in addition to descriptive statistics, it would be necessary to make a comparison - verify the existence of a statistically significant relationship between the analyzed criteria (e.g. Dunnett's test).
In the part devoted to the discussion, it was good to relate the obtained research results to the literature in the field of professional orientation (which would extend a very limited bibliography) and to the labor market, i.e. job offers for high school and university graduates in Romania.
The last part of the article should also point out the limitations of the conducted research.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors:
Your manuscript fits us in a very relevant aspect. Congratulations on the relevance of the study.
I consider that the study fits the qualitative methodology (descriptive).
The manuscript needs some improvement.
I put some aspects for you to reflect on.
- Research Methodology: Is this questionnaire validated? If not, some data reported in this manuscript loses its validity.
If the questionnaire was not validated, I suggest you mention it as a limitation of the study. This aspect could be put forward as a recommendation for further study.
In the sections “Discussion” and "Conclusion": from without validation on the questionnaire, there is some arguments cannot be acceptable.
- I suggest that section 4 should be just "Results".
-Revisit lines 94-95, lines 16-18 and subsections of the "Results" section. It is not just motivation...
- Section “Discussion”: The discussion of results reveals the gap of the references. It is not the article adequately referenced. This study needs to improve this aspect.
Sincerely,
Rev
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The purpose of the article is not explained in the abstract.
The methodology of empirical research should be described in more detail.
Especially the methodology of selecting the research sample should be specified.
Conclusions should be expanded, pointing to the limitations of the analyzed problem and defining the directions of further research.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have correctly addressed my concerns.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors added relevant content to the theoretical part of the article and significantly broadened the discussion of the results. especially valuable seems to be emphasized by the application value of the conducted research.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
the manuscript presents considerable improvements.
Rev
