The Scale of Causes of Churning: Elaboration and Validation for Portuguese Human Resources

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article basically meets the requirements of a research paper.

 However, the author had to revise as follows:

The abstract is emphasized with the findings clearly outlined.

 We recommend that each paragraph contains a description of the meaning of this research, unfortunately 1 paragraph only contains a collection of sentences, sometimes only 4 lines.

 The theoretical background must be added to explain the formation of the research model. In fact, the introductory chapter contains many quotations from previous studies, so that a row of authors' names appears which is compared with the purpose of why this research was carried out.

 Please pay attention to the background, provide a brief explanation of why this research was carried out

Multiple quotes from the same author and with the same citation pattern

The scale must be included in the appendix and source citation

Reliable data and proper research methods.

 Adjust the number of hypotheses following the library order.

Results must be added and discussed, statistics are not necessarily complete.

References may only be cited in journal articles or books. Mastering literature such as dissertations, internet materials, and reports. Referenced journal articles must have volume, issue, and page information, DOI.

 No need to write down all the statistics, just replace them in the form of a description

 References must be written in APA style.

 For conclusions, provide results that do not differ in interpretation

 Please fix the writing template according to the template

 Pay attention to little things like typos, quote models, and so on.

 For images or graphics that come from copy paste results when processing data, they can be included in the attachment. You replace it in the form of an explanation to shorten the page count of your article.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Dear Reviewer,

First of all, we thank you for your valuable comments as well as for your time spent in reviewing our article, which deserved our full consideration.

We will proceed with all your proposed suggestions:

This article basically meets the requirements of a research paper.

 However, the author had to revise as follows:

The abstract is emphasized with the findings clearly outlined.

 We recommend that each paragraph contains a description of the meaning of this research, unfortunately 1 paragraph only contains a collection of sentences, sometimes only 4 lines.

 The theoretical background must be added to explain the formation of the research model. In fact, the introductory chapter contains many quotations from previous studies, so that a row of authors' names appears which is compared with the purpose of why this research was carried out.

 Please pay attention to the background, provide a brief explanation of why this research was carried out

The aim of this study was to design and validate a scale, which will be applied in a future study and where hypotheses will be defined with the aim of establishing causal relationships between variables.

Multiple quotes from the same author and with the same citation pattern

Given the scarcity of literature on the subject under study, we have considered and addressed the most relevant ones, i.e. those which appear most frequently.

The scale must be included in the appendix and source citation

The scale developed resulted from a previous qualitative study which is in press.

Through the results obtained in this study, the present questionnaire was developed.

Appendix 1 shows the scale before its validation and Appendix 2 the scale after its validation.

Reliable data and proper research methods.

 Adjust the number of hypotheses following the library order.

No hypotheses were defined, because this study only aimed to design and validate the scale, in a following study it is that hypotheses will be defined and causal relationships between the variables will be established.

Results must be added and discussed, statistics are not necessarily complete.

References may only be cited in journal articles or books. Mastering literature such as dissertations, internet materials, and reports. Referenced journal articles must have volume, issue, and page information, DOI.

Given the scarcity of literature on the topic of churning, not all articles have DOI

 No need to write down all the statistics, just replace them in the form of a description

 References must be written in APA style.

References were revised taking into account the APA standard

 For conclusions, provide results that do not differ in interpretation

 Please fix the writing template according to the template

We took into consideration the template available from the magazine and put it into practice.

 Pay attention to little things like typos, quote models, and so on.

 For images or graphics that come from copy paste results when processing data, they can be included in the attachment. You replace it in the form of an explanation to shorten the page count of your article.

We understand that we have tables/images that are large and take up space, however, in the template provided by the magazine it is mentioned that images and figures should be in the main text, and it is optional to place them in an appendix.

In this sense, we chose only to place the questionnaire in the appendix.

Appendix 1 contains the questionnaire before validation and Appendix 2 the results of the questionnaire after validation.

Thank you very much!

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper has shown a good contribution of study. However, the selection of constructs, although they have been described in table 1 with references, would be better backed up by underlying theory (whether employee churning should be seen from an organizational or individual level).

You have mentioned that you conducted EFA and CFA with two sets of data in your abstract and methodology part , however you may have to clarify your unit of analysis which covers the organizational or individual level of the unit of analysis. Because your data have diverse backgrounds and seemed like anyone could answer your survey from any industry and any positions, why don't you focus on employee churning in one industry as constructs may have different impact? 

For scales, you have explained why you prefer to use 10 scales rather than 5 or 7 scales. You should also justify how 10 scales could be better than 5-7 scales which I personally think 5-7 scales may be more appropriate as they have a central scale for showing neutral feedback rather than 10 scales? You might beg to differ and please justify how you run the analysis or any statistical adjustment that can influence your findings for different scales.

Please run G power analysis to indicate the minimum sample size in your study? Did you have a time lag for the same respondents in your EFA and CFA or did you have different data sets for both groups?

 pg12 typo Kmo should be KMO Bartlett?

Correlations only show how strong the connection and relationship between one variable with the other; not prove the sign of positive and negative direction/correlation values? Please check your discussion (pg 16).  

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Dear Reviewer,

First of all, we thank you for your valuable comments as well as for your time spent in reviewing our article, which deserved our full consideration.

We will proceed with all your proposed suggestions:

This paper has shown a good contribution of study. However, the selection of constructs, although they have been described in table 1 with references, would be better backed up by underlying theory (whether employee churning should be seen from an organizational or individual level).

You have mentioned that you conducted EFA and CFA with two sets of data in your abstract and methodology part , however you may have to clarify your unit of analysis which covers the organizational or individual level of the unit of analysis. Because your data have diverse backgrounds and seemed like anyone could answer your survey from any industry and any positions, why don't you focus on employee churning in one industry as constructs may have different impact? 

The focus of our study is the churning of workers, hence our choice fell on workers, we chose different sectors of activity to have an insight in which area there is greater occurrence of churning.

For scales, you have explained why you prefer to use 10 scales rather than 5 or 7 scales. You should also justify how 10 scales could be better than 5-7 scales which I personally think 5-7 scales may be more appropriate as they have a central scale for showing neutral feedback rather than 10 scales? You might beg to differ and please justify how you run the analysis or any statistical adjustment that can influence your findings for different scales.

In section 1.3, we explained the choice of a 10-point scale and not a 5- or 7-point scale.

We mentioned why this option was chosen in detriment of another type of scale.

Please run G power analysis to indicate the minimum sample size in your study? Did you have a time lag for the same respondents in your EFA and CFA or did you have different data sets for both groups?

As mentioned in the sample section, a non-probability random sampling by convenience was used, based on the respondents, resulting in an EFA with a sample of 349 respondents and an AFC with a sample of 452 respondent

 pg12 typo Kmo should be KMO Bartlett?

It was changed to KMO Bartlett as suggested.

Correlations only show how strong the connection and relationship between one variable with the other; not prove the sign of positive and negative direction/correlation values? Please check your discussion (pg 16).  

The aim of this study was to design and validate the questionnaire, in a future study we intend to analyse the correlations between variables.

As we are not interested in analysing causal relationships, no hypotheses were defined.

In a future study we intend to analyse the positive or negative impact between the variables.

Thank you very much!