JerMa88/BMC_Womens_Health_Peer_Reviews huggingface dataset:
Reviewer's report
Title:Domestic violence and mental health in Bolivia
Version: 2Date:27 October 2012
Reviewer: Sherry Lipsky
Reviewer's report:
Major Compulsory Revisions
1. Intro: Although worldwide prevalences are important to note, specific
comparisons with Latin America and/or Bolivia would be even more important to
include…this is not done in the paragraph on emotional abuse.
2. References lacking in last paragraph, pg 2, regarding machismo
3. Please separate data/population from methods and measures from data
analysis. Measures section is very long – needs to be more succinct with
perhaps lists instead of run on text
4. What were the DV questions based on? Sounds like a modified version of the
Conflict Tactics Scales.
5. Data Analysis: Why use probit regression when logistic regression is the more
standard regression technique for cross-sectional data. The analysis should
focus on the association of partner violence with mental health outcomes. The
data on the relationship between the control variables and the mental health
variables are irrelevant. Were all the control variables used in each analysis or
did the authors use some form of model building? Finally, why report on each
symptom? Would be more relevant (and succinct) to combine symptoms for each
major ‘outcome’ category (depression, anxiety, etc).
6. Results/Tables: Do not make sense…need better labeling of columns; what is
being compared? Should also include standard errors or CIs. Also, table
headings say odds but table reports percentages. The accompanying text is also
difficult to follow.
7. Discussion: first paragraph repetitive of intro. Should begin with key findings
and then compare to other studies where applicable. Conclusions should be
more specific.
Minor Essential Revisions
1. Abstract and elsewhere—the data are cross-sectional…cannot assume the
“effect of violence on mental health”.
2. Conclusions: Abstract and text—DV programs do not treat injuries, they
provide services. What programs in developing countries “should screen
patients…”
3. Intro: “…said to have” is not appropriate when citing studies. Please use
‘studies have found’ or demonstrated’ as an example.
4. There are many different types of victims (children, elders, partners, etc)
included in the term domestic violence. Please be specific throughout the
manuscript who you are referring to (i.e. spouses, intimate partners…)
5. Last para of intro belongs in methods section and is repeated at end of pg 3 as
well.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:Domestic violence and mental health in Bolivia
Version: 2Date:7 January 2013
Reviewer: Helen Herrman
Reviewer's report:
The paper reports a study of an important and neglected topic. It finds an
interesting pattern of associations between domestic violence in the 12 months
before the survey and symptoms of depression, anxiety and seizures. The paper
provides a good scholarly introduction to the topic and justifies the study aims.
The conclusions indicate the potential for such studies to promote policy
development.
I have a number of comments that may be of use to the authors.
1. The context of the study is not entirely clear. I suggest the authors explain their
role and the role of colleagues in Bolivia. What form of cooperation or
collaboration exists and how was the study conceived? What sort of research
capacity building was accomplished as part of the work?
2. The acknowledgements indicate that the study was funded by USAID, but the
auspice for the study is not stated. The statement on research ethics needs to be
made clearer. What organisation(s) provided the institutional ethics approval for
each country? How does the commercial company ICF International relate to
these organisations? I suggest these matters are added to the text of the paper
as well as acknowledgements as appropriate.
3. The survey staff received special training (page 3). It would be useful to read
about how the staff were recruited (local people or people familiar with the
culture), and what was the nature of their experience and training. How were
local cultures and languages considered? Is there any recorded information
about their experiences of conducting the interviews? Where were the interviews
held and how was privacy assured?
4. The statistical methods will need review by an expert in the field (not my
expertise). How does the pattern of findings of significant associations translate
into meaningful differences in morbidity or loss of health? What order of
magnitude difference is found?
5. Is the lack of association between adverse early life events and mental ill
heath unexpected? I suggest the authors discuss this point.
The language and presentation of the paper are good.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Intimate partner violence and mental health in Bolivia
Version: 3Date:21 February 2013
Reviewer: Sherry Lipsky
Reviewer's report:
Minor essential revisions:
The authors addressed most of the reviewer's comments with a few exceptions.
Since the authors chose to list all the symptoms of each diagnostic category
(albeit not diagnostic in the true sense), it leaves the tables and the text of the
results section is a bit too long. If the authors want to keep all the symptoms
separate, I suggest summarizing the results a bit more. The tables are well
organized but the columns are not labeled. It would be easier to read if what is in
the 'notes' section would be in the column headings (e.g., CIs).
Major compulsory revisions:
Most importantly, there are no comparisons to other studies in the discussion
section even though the authors report that they added them. This section needs
to be expanded with a more thorough discussion of the study findings and how
they might relate to other studies.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:Intimate partner violence and mental health in Bolivia
Version: 3Date:1 March 2013
Reviewer: Helen Herrman
Reviewer's report:
The article reads well and response to comments is helpful.
Minor Essential Revisions
Wording suggesting a causal relationship between psychological abuse and
depression (unwarranted as this is a cross-sectional study) needs to be amended
in the Abstract, penultimate sentence of results; and on page 13 (last paragraph
of discussion, last page).
Discretionary Revisions
I suggest that a sentence is added to the discussion to indicate that childhood
abuse may also be associated with depression (although this was not the focus
of study here).
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Intimate partner violence and mental health in Bolivia
Version: 4Date:9 May 2013
Reviewer: Sherry Lipsky
Reviewer's report:
The paper has not changed much from the last review -- the methods section
should be after the measures section and does not need to be repeated in the
results section. Several sentences need revising for inappropriate or confusing
wording. In the main, the results section is still too lengthy--no need to report
every single item in the tables and no need to comment on those that are
nonsignficant. The discussion section now contains a few new references to
other studies but is fairly superficial.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:"It's not Easy to Acknowledge That I'm Ill": A Qualitative Investigation into
the Health Seeking Behavior of Rural Palestinian Women
Version: 6Date:12 September 2012
Reviewer: Katarina Hjelm
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for letting me review this paper. It is an important area to investigate
and I encourage the authors to revise and resubmit the manuscript. However, the
main problem with the article is that the methodological section is not based on
existing literature concerning scientific methods. There is a description of a
conceptual framework but the different steps and decisions taken in the research
process is not based on literature and appropriately described. There is a lack of
information concerning study design, motive for chosen data collection method,
sample size determination, data analysis and matters of rigour and
trustworthiness. Some information is given but it is not based on existing
literature.
Another question is how the authors think about the research questions “how and
why” in relation to that the aim of the study is “to explore what factors shape
women’s health seeking behaviour”?
Thus, major compulsory revisions are needed before it is possible to judge the
rest of the manuscript.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:"A man's gonna do what a man wants to do": African American and
Hispanic women's perceptions about heterosexual relationships: a qualitative
study
Version: 3Date:3 April 2013
Reviewer: Catherine MacPhail
Reviewer's report:
Major Compulsory Revisions
1. I could not assess response to my comment about Table 2 as, although the
authors note that they converted Table 2 into a diagram, this doesn’t seem to
have been attached in the resubmission. I have looked at the full pdf document
and at the various attachments and it seems that the interview schedule may
have been included twice.
Minor Essential Revisions
1. All minor essential revisions that I originally suggested have been addressed.
2. Page 8, line 10: “. . . option of informed consent in either English or Spanish.”
3. Page 17, line 16: “Descriptions of personal relationship [remove plural]
experiences . . .”
4. Page 19, line 3: change insure to ensure
5. Page 23, line 10: should this not be “FL women’s experiences” rather than “FL
woman’s experiences”?
Discretionary Revisions
1. I still feel that the risk perception issue is not fully explored. These women
identify the risks for HIV infection and the behaviours that women could adopt to
reduce HIV transmission but they don’t seem to make the connection with their
own behaviour despite the information presented about them from the
quantitative data showing that they meet most of the risk criteria. I find this issue
fascinating and while accepting that the data from this study might not be geared
toward better understanding this issue, feel that this is a major focus that we
need to concentrate on.
2. In my rereading of the paper I notice that there is a discrepancy in reporting
that women all desire long-term serious relationships and the discussion of
women having transitory sexual relationships. This discrepancy might require
some additional explanation as I think that the recent literature (and the data
presented here) are showing that women are moving towards accepting that they
too have short-term non-romantic relationships. I think that in many instances
there is a desire that these evolve into committed relationships, but they are
certainly initiated as casual.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Psychometric properties of a French scale for assessing body image in
unaffected female BRCA 1/2 mutation carriers/non carriers.
Version: 1Date:10 December 2012
Reviewer: Richard Fielding
Reviewer's report:
Psychometric properties of a French scale for assessing body image in
unaffected female BRCA 1/2 mutation carriers/non carriers.
This manuscript reports the validation of a French version of a body image scale
for women with BRCA1/2 gene variants.
The Introduction is adequate and well referenced, and, with the exception of the
clarifications listed below, the methods are well described. Generally the
validation is competently implemented and described and I have no further
comments other than to ask the authors to provide the clarifications listed.
Compulsory revisions.
Methods:
1. How were these women recruited – was this a random sample or otherwise?
How were the scales administered and by whom? Were they self- completed or
interviewer-administered?
2. Give details of the other scales (if any in addition to the CES-D) referred to in
the section mentioning “Q15”.
3. Nomenclature: Perhaps rather than using “Q0” and “Q15” the term “draft’ and
the names of the remaining scales be used instead (if that is indeed what they
are – I am not sure). This would help make the paper a little less opaque to
readers trying to follow what you did and why.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Reviewer's report
Title:Psychometric properties of a French version of a Dutch scale for assessing
breast and body image (BBIS) in healthy women.
Version: 2Date:29 March 2013
Reviewer: PAGONA ROUSSI
Reviewer's report:
Discretionary Revisions: The authors have addressed all the issues identified by
the reviewers. My only comment is that the English could be improved.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Improved quality of life after surgery for pelvic organ prolapse in Nepalese
women
Version: 1Date:3 January 2013
Reviewer: Fredrik Granath
Reviewer's report:
This is in general a well written and adequately analyzed study.
Major comments:
The only major concern about this study, relying on a before and after surgery
assessment, would be that the loss to follow-up is selective. Even though no
substantial differences in QOL at base-line between participants and those lost to
follow-up were found, it may be the case that women with improved QOL are
more likely to participate. It can of course also be the other way around. I would
like to see a more elaborate discussion on the potential for bias due to patients
lost to follow-up.
When looking at the scores for the different QOL domains after 3 months they
seem to be very similar to the scores of women without pelvic organ prolapse.
Does this mean that surgery altered their QOL to a level that would be expected
among women without POP? Could this be formally analyzed by comparing
women without POP with the 3 months post-surgery scores, with suitable
adjustments for confounding factors? Do the authors think that it is reasonable
that the QOL is on average fully restored already after 3 months? Or could it be
that patient with poor improvement of QOL have higher probability of loss to
follow-up?
Minor comments:
I do not find it necessary to state the use of the GEE method in the results
section it is sufficient to state this in the method section.
The last sentence in Statistical analysis: should it not be <0.05?
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Reviewer's report
Title:Improved quality of life after surgery for pelvic organ prolapse in Nepalese
women
Version: 1Date:19 February 2013
Reviewer: Riitta Luoto
Reviewer's report:
The manuscript describes QoL among women with pelvic organ prolapse in
Nepal. Although the phenomenon is common and treatable, there are some
problems in the article related to comparison group.
Major compulsory revisions
-Opposite to the literature published, the authors claim that there is no
information on QoL of women with pelvic organ prolapse in low-income countries,
but there seems to be many references from this district.
- Parity is one of the most important risk factor of POP, but seems to be missing
from the study, please explain why
- Flow chart showing the number of cases and the process would clarify the data
collection
- Age difference between the women with POP and without is 10 years, which is
likely to explain most of the differences in QoL. Restriction to the similar age
women should be necessary in analyses. Another possibility is to revise the
article by excluding the reference group, only showing the before-after QoL
results
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
No competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Improved quality of life after surgery for pelvic organ prolapse in Nepalese
women
Version: 2Date:30 April 2013
Reviewer: Fredrik Granath
Reviewer's report:
In general I am satisfied with the response of the authors. Concerning,
comparisons with the control group, I partly disagree with the authors. The
lacking time factor in the control group is in my view not all that important since
they are supposed to represent some kind of random sample from the population
and the expected change of QoL over a 3 month period should be small, and the
QoL after intervention may therfore also be compared with the control group.
However, I would not insist on such an analysis, since there may also be
problems with represenativity of the control group. It is therforer prudent of the
authors to only state that QoL is improved in the surgery group,
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:A second generation cervico-vaginal lavage device shows similar
performance as its preceding version with respect to DNA yield and HPV DNA
results
Version: 1Date:11 December 2012
Reviewer: Peter Hillemanns
Reviewer's report:
This is a very nice and straightforward study, well written, concerning a topic of
major importance.
Discretionary Revisions:
It would be interesting to see the participation rates according to age. Were there
any differences between younger and elder women, were there differences
between the two lavage devices?
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
Delphi Bioscience BV, Scherpenzeel, provided he first generation of the Delphi
Screener for research at our clinic without any charges.
Reviewer's report
Title:A second generation cervico-vaginal lavage device shows similar
performance as its preceding version with respect to DNA yield and HPV DNA
results
Version: 1Date:29 January 2013
Reviewer: Bengt Andrae
Reviewer's report:
The question posed by the authors is well defined, the data are sound, the
discussion and conclusions are well balanced and supported by the data, the
limitations are clearly stated and the authors acknowledge the upon which they
are building. The title and abstract accurately convey what has been found and
the writing is acceptable.
The statistical methods are probably appropriate but need to be more thoroughly
described, and reviewed by a statisician.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Determinants of sexual health knowledge among adolescent girls in
schools of Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia
Version: 2Date:26 February 2013
Reviewer: Hsiang-Chu Pai
Reviewer's report:
Comment to the Author
Thanks you for the opportunity to review this paper. Please kindly see the
following comments:
Abstract
The aims of the study are suggested to be stated in more concrete way. The
relevant factors of sexual knowledge are quite extensive that the authors should
indicate the research factors of this study directly. And consistent with the
authors states that on page 4 (line 8 to10): “We hypothesize that factors related
to parent, friends and school will be significant in determining the sexual
knowledge of adolescents in …….”.
Introduction
1. The problem statement offers strong support for the problem and need for this
study.
2. The literature review is very culturally relevant to the problem and population.
Methodology
1. The authors did not explain why they selected only one item to represent the
sexual knowledge for adolescent girls. Reliability and validity are not reported for
the data collection instruments/questionnaires, and should be added as available
and/or attainable.
2. In sample size and sampling methodology section, the authors need to explain
more details for sampling and sample power.
Result and Discussion
1. The discussion of the results is very clear and the discussion of the
relationship between the findings from this and other prior relevant studies is
strength.
2. There is a minor mistake on Page11 (line 4): “For elder adolescents, parent's
role was not found as an important determinant of sexual knowledge.” Should be
“ not found as an important”.