Title: Adverse childhood experiences and depressive symptoms among lesbian and bisexual
women in China
Version: 4 Date: 20 Jun 2023
Reviewer's report:
PEER REVIEWER ASSESSMENTS:
OBJECTIVE - Full research articles: is there a clear objective that addresses a testable research
question(s) (brief or other article types: is there a clear objective)?
Yes - there is a clear objective
DESIGN - Is the current approach (including controls and analysis protocols) appropriate for
the objective?
No - there are minor issues
EXECUTION - Are the experiments and analyses performed with technical rigor to allow
confidence in the results?
No - there are major issues
STATISTICS - Is the use of statistics in the manuscript appropriate?
No - there are issues with the statistics in the study
INTERPRETATION - Is the current interpretation/discussion of the results reasonable and not
overstated?
No - there are minor issues
OVERALL MANUSCRIPT POTENTIAL - Is the current version of this work technically
sound? If not, can revisions be made to make the work technically sound?
Probably - with minor revisions
PEER REVIEWER COMMENTS:
GENERAL COMMENTS: Overall comments
Abstract
• Under the results please add a sentence to describe your population. You can remove the details
from the second sentence "24.6% reported…" as this can be further explained in the manuscript.
• Please include B=x.xx (95% CI: xx.xx-xx.xx) for regression analysis. P-values are not needed.
Also the proper term is "associated" not "correlated"
Manuscript
• For table 2-3 you have not conducted regression analysis, rather t-tests, hence you are not
examining "associations" you are just looking to see if the groups are statistically different for
depressive symptoms.
# With this said - I do feel that univariate regression models would be ideal for these two tables
so that you can directly examine the association between each demographic and self-reported
symptoms of depression. It would be nice to know which groups for example are significantly
different compared to your reference categories.
• For table 5 - I would change your title to be more respectful of the population you are studying.
I would also include the model specifications below the table so that the reader understand the
variables in each model.
# Model 1 states that you examined the "relation between any ACE and depressive symptoms";
however, it appears you examined the association between self-reported at least one ACE and
self-reported depressive symptoms score while controlling for age, education, employment and
residence. It makes sense that you controlled for these variables however, you do not include this
step in the methods for your analysis section. Therefore the statement for your model 1 result
should read something like this; "for each increase in reported ACE, there was an increase in
reported symptoms of depression (B=2.42 (95% CI:0.82-4.01) indepdentent of age, education,
employment status and residence."
# In general I feel you need a biostat consultant to assist on this paper. You have amazing data
that should be examined using the best approach known to date. I do not feel the manuscript
has accomplished this as yet.
REQUESTED REVISIONS:
Please see above. More work is needed to flush out your analysis and then updating your results/
tables to ensure they are following best practices.