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Review 2 of "Do I Report This? Understanding Variation in the Content of State Mandatory Reporting Laws"

...Qualitative...Criminology

Published onJan 05, 2021
Review 2 of "Do I Report This? Understanding Variation in the Content of State Mandatory Reporting Laws"
key-enterThis Pub is a Review of

Vote: Publish pending minor changes


[For votes to count, referees must reasonably explain why they voted as they did. Thus, please explain your vote. If you voted to publish pending minor changes, specify each change, why it is needed, and, possibly, how it should/could be done.]

The paper was well-written and will make a strong addition to the literature. There were only a few minor edits that I recommend to improve the final manuscript:

  • Introduction paragraph 1 – strike word “only” in the sentence “institutions and governmental agencies began to expand…”

  • In the paragraph following the heading “the intersection of mandatory reporting and criminal justice teaching and research,” first person pronouns are used for the first time. Prior to this, the authors have not identified themselves as educators, so the phrase “disclosed to us by adult” is not immediately clear. A simple sentence identifying the authors as CJ educators would correct this.

  • Tables 1 – 3 were organized and easy to follow, but they did not read very easily on the computer because all five columns were so slim. The Subcategory Description and Representative Segment in particular were very difficult to read because they had so many line jumps (see screenshot below). If the authors could find a way to restructure the table so that these two columns were given more space, it would greatly enhance the reader-friendliness of the table overall.

  • I would suggest use of patterns or color in Figure 1. I had difficulty figuring out which states were considered “no shading” and “light grey” because my monitor showed more of a brown color. I’m sure that’s more of an issue with my monitor colors, but if there was an additional pattern provided in the shading, it would increase clarity across all screens.

  • In Robert Lytle’s biography, there is a typo in the second line “His research interests are center around…”

[Please put additional info below, as/if you see fit.]

I loved the clarity and transparency of the coding process. It goes beyond what most qualitative research papers provide, but I think it is very well written. It walks the reader through your analysis step by step, and the level of detail provided would make it easy to reproduce the analysis again. 

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