Title: Prevalence and associated factors of early sexual initiation among female youth in East
Africa: Further analysis of recent demographic and health survey
Version: 2 Date: 22 May 2022
Reviewer:  Monica Ewomazino Akokuwebe
Reviewer's report:
Reviewer’s Comments
This topic is significant for public health and demographers as it is a topical issue that is
associated with risky sexual behaviours such as engaging in an unprotected sexual intercourse,
multiple sexual partners and incorrect or inconsistent condom use leading to HIV/AIDS,
sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortion, early childbirth
and psychosocial problems. The prevalence for each countries and also the pooled prevalence
of all countries in East Africa is key as it will aid in building better interventions to reduce
the tendencies of such risky behaviours (ICC). Factors associated with early sexual initiation
are important to help in understanding the need of health education in building better and
efficient public health interventions. The identification of the magnitude of the associated factors
with early sexual initiation becomes imperatives as it will design appropriate interventions
and policies that will target early sexual debt among youths especially the female gender with
collaborative effort of policy makers, stakeholders and other concerned organisations that focus
on sexual and reproductive health programmes for the youths, irrespective of their gender.
Abstract: All comments have been made in the main manuscript
Introduction: All comments have been made in the main manuscript. The introduction should
involve an in-depth narrative of recent literature with a lot of citations (I have added a lot of
downloaded literature).
Methodology: All comments have been made in the main manuscript. You must describe your
method in details. Look at some of the published articles that I have downloaded, added to the
folder and follow the methods template.
Results: All comments have been made in the main manuscript
You must run the analysis for this study following the template below:
Table 1: Sociodemographic factors for the population (all countries together)
Table 2: Socio-demographic factors for the respondents by each country (all in one table)
Figure 1: Prevalence of early sexual initiation by countries and include the pooled prevalence
for East African Region (Bar Chart)
Table 3: Bivariate analysis of the associated factors for early sexual initiation for all countries
(each country), but all in one table 3.
Table 4: Unadjusted Logistics Regression predicting the factors associated with early sexual
initiation for all countries (all in one table)
Table 5: Adjusted Logistics Regression predicting the factors associated with early sexual
initiation for all countries (all in one table)
Discussion: Your discussion must centred and focused on the results or findings outcomes.
Follow the findings each by paragraph and explain alongside with recent literature review and
insert a lot of citations. Please, follow other published works that I have downloaded and add
to the review folder.
Conclusion: Conclusion should stem from the findings and the discussion and it should be brief.
It should also include recommendations. However, some comments have been made in the main
manuscript regarding it.
Please note that: I have downloaded a lot of articles that will help you build the work. This is
a very good and topical research.
Reviewer’s Comments: I strongly recommend the paper is accepted for publication after
effecting all comments in the main manuscript (Accepted for Publication with Minor Revision).