Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Collective efficacy measures for women and girls in low- and middle-
income countries: a systematic review
Version: 
0 
Date: 
03 Jan 2021
Reviewer's report:
The manuscript reports a review on measures of collective efficacy for women
and girls in low and middle income countries.
The topic is interesting and of theoretical and practical significance for
understanding factors impacting women's health. However, as it stands, the
manuscript is unsuitable for publication and needs an extensive revision, which I
encourage, in order to improve its quality and original contribution.
Introduction
Firstly, there is a conceptual/theoretical problem with the notion of collective
efficacy that should be addressed. The authors briefly mention (in the
introductory section) literature on collective efficacy in psychology (e.g.
Bandura), and adopt an operationalisation of the concept to guide the collection
of the literature that is very broad (intragroup dynamics and collective action),
not theoretically based (they do not provide a theory justifying such
operationalisation), that maps also other concepts (e.g. empowerment, social
capital, etc) that have themselves a specific definition, theorizing, and empirical
research on their own. The end result is that the reader does not understand what
is exactly reviewed in the paper. A more precise definition, review and
discussion of the different - partly overlapping - constructs captured by the
measures reviewed is necessary for the sake of clarity and comparison across
research findings using the different measures. We need to know how collective
efficacy is similar or distinct from other constructs assessed by the measures
reviewed, on which there is already a large literature on their own.
Second, I do not see a theoretical discussion of the specificity of collective
efficacy for women vs men: if the measures reviewed are specific for women
and capture the phenomenon as having different dimensions as compared with
men, this should be discussed. Otherwise, they are simply reviewing studies
assessing collective efficacy in women but using measures that are applicable
also across genders. In this case what is the point of addressing measures of
collective efficacy for women? Or are the authors more interested in the
outcomes of the studies conducted using these measures?
This brings to a next point which I found confusing: the title of the manuscript
indicates that the aim of the paper is to review measures of collective efficacy;
however, in the results section I would have expected a discussion on the
measures (e.g. comparisons across measures and respective dimensions,
relationship with the peculiar context and sample on which they are collected,
identification of common vs different dimensions that could be the basis for the
development of a new measure that could allow a comparison across countries,
etc) and not a review of the results of the research studies assessing the impact of
collective efficacy on health outcomes. For the sake of clarity I suggest to keep
these two objectives distict (e.g. including only the first aim in this paper).
Method
In the list of databases searched I do not see Scopus and WOS, which cover
extensively the multidisciplinary literature.
Discussion
The sentence "The current heterogeneity across studies is partly due to the
difference in theoretical underpinnings guiding the understanding of collective
efficacy": I would more correctly say that they in some cases are addressing
different constructs (not collective efficacy as operationalised by the authors).
Again, a discussion on the relationship between the operationalisation of
collective efficacy used by the authors and the existing theoretical and empirical
literature on the concept as well as other partly overlapping constructs is needed
to fully appreciate the original and added contribution of the study to the
literature.
Moreover, I miss the implications of the study: are the authors interested in
developing a new, more comprehensive measure that could help to investigate
collective efficacy in women/girls in low and middle income studies? Are they
interested in assessing the association between collective efficacy and health
related outcomes? The aim of the study and its theoretical and practical
significance should be better specified.
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
Yes
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
No
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free
from apparent manipulation?
Yes