Review 2 of "Noble Intent Is Not Enough to Run Veterans Court Mentoring Programs: A Qualitative Study of Mentors’ Role Orientation and Responsibilities"

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.]

I suggest minor revisions in the methods, discussion, and limitations sections.  First, it is important to specify what types of triangulation were used to increase the rigor of the data collection and analysis and the reliability and validity of the qualitative findings.  It appears that multiple techniques were used, such as methodological triangulation, investigator triangulation, and data triangulation.  Also, please note if other techniques were used, such as member checking and negative case analysis, and if not, perhaps this should be added as a limitation and/or suggestion for future research (e.g. future studies should use member checking).  Second, please identify what theoretical approach guided your data collection and analysis (I assume phenomenology), and discuss how this approach was specifically used (e.g. a phenomenological approach may be used in developing interview or focus group questions to capture participants’ lived experiences in veterans treatment court).  Third, please note the questions that were asked during the interviews.  The interviews were semi-structured, which would require predetermined questions to be asked first to begin the dialogue.  Next, the beginning (first section) of the discussion section needs revision.  Specifically, this is an opportunity to compare and contrast the current findings to that of previous research.  The authors do not do this in the first section, actually only one study is cited in this section.  And, statements are made such as, “Prior studies have noted the important role mentors can play among civilian populations and in the military”, but there are no citations to support this statement.  What prior studies?  Last, in regard to the limitations section, please emphasis that the findings from this study are not generalizable beyond the research sample and that the findings may have been impacted by social desirability bias.