Reviewer's report
Title:Sexual coercion among married women in Nepal
Version: 1Date:12 May 2010
Reviewer: Jamila Stockman
Reviewer's report:
Major Compulsory Revisions
1.Overall, the grammar throughout the manuscript needs to be addressed and
edited accordingly. For example, there are sections in which a word is missing
(e.g., “Two thirds women” should be “Two-thirds of 1,536 women”)or an extra
word is in place (e.g., “..with 47% of them were illiterate” should be “…with 47%
of them illiterate”. This should be looked at very carefully.
2.This is a critical comment: More recent references should be provided to
support the information presented in the background section. Also, the authors
may benefit from reading and citing review papers that have focused on forced
sex such as a recent article by Campbell et al. 2009.
3.The sentences in the third paragraph of the background section should be
more tightly connected and linked.
4.Since the authors focus is sexual coercion which represents a continuum of
types of coercion (forced to threats to intimidation), it is imperative that definitions
are introduced such as when the authors mention ‘sexual violence’ following a
sentence on ‘nonconsensual sex’. Are they referring to the same thing? Any
distinctions?
5.The fourth paragraph of the background section contains a significant amount
of information on violence among pregnant women. This should be abbreviated if
it is not the focus of the study objectives. It is also easy to get lost in this
paragraph because there is a shift from discussing sexual violence to violence
overall. Yes, sexual and physical violence are linked and this can be stated in a
single sentence but the focus should remain on sexual violence.
6.In the methods section, the paragraph that describes sexual coercion is very
hard to follow. Timeframes are not presented (e.g., sexual coercion in one’s
lifetime or past year?). There is a lot of critical information presented but it is very
disorganized. It may be helpful to breakdown the perception of power relation as
the following: a) whether a wife should obey her husband even if she disagrees;
b) whether a woman can…etc. The grammar should be corrected throughout this
section.
7.The last paragraph in the methods section should be edited. It is not necessary
to discuss that the questionnaires were edited and coded before entering into the
computer. This paragraph reads like a grant proposal. For the sake of manuscript
writing purposes, this paragraph should contain information on how the data was
analyzed (similar to last few sentences) and if the authors choose, what
statistical analysis program was used to conduct analyses.
8.In the results section (the first paragraph), the authors use the term, “a
considerable proportion” two different times: to refer to 33% and to refer to 51%.
These are very different amounts. How can they both be referred to as “a
considerable proportion”?
9.In Table 1, this is the first report of categories for male patriarchal control and
perception regarding power relations. These categories should be mentioned in
the methods section, along with how they were constructed (as indicated in the
tables; e.g., low control indicated the endorsement of two or fewer issues).
10.For the multivariate logistic regression analysis, it is crucial that confidence
intervals are presented with each odds ratio. Some of these parameter estimates
should be interpreted in the last paragraph of the results section in an
epidemiologic manner. This final paragraph is hard to follow.
11.The discussion section should draw upon more current literature to
substantiate or refute the study findings. Again, a large number of grammatical
errors are present in this section.
Minor Essential Revisions
BACKGROUND
1.In the background section, the sentence beginning, “a 15-country…” the word,
“related” should be reframed, perhaps use the term, “reported”.
2.More recent references should be provided to support the statement, “Many
other studies have noted this type of “defensive acquiescence”.
3.In the sentence beginning, “Likewise, about two-thirds…” the location of the
study should be mentioned first rather than last.
4.The sentence beginning, “Similarly, a study conducted in Papua New
Guinea…” should delete the word, “similarly” because it is not clear what is
similar about this study compared to the aforementioned sentence.
5.Since the word, “Sexual violence” is in the middle of a sentence, the ‘s’ should
not be capitalized.
6.The third paragraph contains a number of grammatical errors and should be
reviewed and edited accordingly.
METHODS
7.In the second paragraph, excess information is presented. Information
regarding pre-testing of the questionnaires is excessively presented. Also, the
hiring of University students should not be mentioned. If the authors wish to state
the importance of the interviewers being culturally competent, they can just state
that.
8.Regarding confidentiality, this can be abbreviated. Also in this paragraph, it is
useful to have a sentence on what IRB approved of this study.
9.Were participants compensated?
RESULTS
10.The word, “love marriage” is used for the first time. What is this?
11.The following statement should be deleted, “The literacy level of the husband
is higher than that of wife.” This is because the results section is reserved just for
that. It is only necessary to report the data.
12.All tables should have a more comprehensive title that includes the number of
participants, the study population and the study location (refer to previously
published manuscripts). Table 2 should have the n’s provided alongside the
percent.
DISCUSSION
13.The first paragraph restates a lot of what was presented in the results section.
This is fine but should discuss the findings as they relate to other literature. This
is not done until the second paragraph. The first paragraph should serve to
highlight the prevalence of sexual coercion and how its estimate is similar or
different to estimates reported in other countries. It would be useful to mention
these estimates here with appropriate references. The paragraph may be
concluded with the last sentence already present – bivariate results should be
deleted.
Discretionary Revisions
1.The word, “per cent” should be replaced with its symbol (%).
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
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 declare that I have no competing interests.