Title: Evaluation of the effectiveness of a postnatal support education program for husbands in
promotion of their primiparous wives’ perceived social support: a randomized controlled trial
Version: 5 Date: 23 Dec 2022
Reviewer's report:
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to review this manuscript.
I congratulate the authors for the work done and the effort to plan and carry out a randomized
clinical trial.
Below I will make some suggestions with the aim of improving the manuscript:
Introduction:
I think that it can be improved if some previous studies on trials of a similar nature are added.
In the discussion section there are some studies that could be cited in the introduction to better
contextualize it. It would also be more interesting to expand the information on the importance
of support at this time.
I suggest creating a subsection at the end of the introduction in which the purpose and objectives
of the study are explained in more detail "present study".
Another interesting issue is that the introduction mentions studies that state that the most
important support is that of the husband; however, other studies tell us that women in matters
of care seek the support of other women in the first place, provide a discussion on this issue in
the corresponding section.
Method:
I have some doubts regarding the method and design, a considerable effort has been made to
design a randomized trial, but I believe that in the inclusion and exclusion criteria only a very
specific type of family has been considered, excluding all other possible cases, this prevents
the generalization of results and this aspect should be added in the study limitations section. I
believe that there is a cultural component that must be taken into account when interpreting the
results later.
I see another handicap in not having collected information from the husbands, in not having
included the women themselves in the intervention and that the only source of information is
the women.
Regarding the instruments used, it would greatly improve the explanation if some items were
provided as examples.
In the introduction, social support and the 3 types of support are discussed, but in the design it
is not clear to me if women are asked about these 3 types of support.
Results:
I believe that the analyzes are limited, this issue should be taken into account and included in
the study limitations section, recommending for future research more sophisticated statistical
analysis.
The question about satisfaction with the sex of the baby has caught my attention. What
justification is there for asking this information?
Discussion and Conclusions:
It becomes long and tedious to read, it is well argued but I would try to make an effort to
summarize it and perhaps some studies could be mentioned in the introductory section.
In the section on limitations of the study, I see it as essential that reference be made to the
cultural component, this prevents generalization to other realities, since we found that the study
talks about families made up of a man and a woman and who are married, this reality is very
specific, although widespread. , but we must consider that there may be other family models
(single parent, mixed families, not married, formed by people of the same sex), which are not
considered here and could be considered in other studies. A reflection could also be made on
gender roles and how this issue can influence the perception of support and dissatisfaction with
the motherhood experience.