Reviewer's report
Title:Correlates of women's health seeking behaviour and empowerment of
women in Ethiopia
Version:2Date:18 August 2015
Reviewer: Philip Adongo
Reviewer's report:
Correlates of women’s health seeking behavior and empowerment of women in
Ethiopia.
Major Compulsory revision
This study that looks at correlates of women’s have seeking behavior and
empowerment of women in Ethiopia could be an important contribution to
literature on women health in sub-Saharan Africa. The data used for the
manuscript was derived from the 2005 and 2011 EDHS, which is appropriate for
this type of study and analysis. The authors provide a good descriptive analysis
and tables to data. This is followed up with vigorous regression analysis.
However, the authors will have to address the following concerns to put the
paper in a publishable state:
1. Title: After having read the entire manuscript, I am of the view that the title of
the manuscript should change in order for it to reflect what it seeks to achieve
which it gender characteristics, health and empowerment of women. I will like to
suggest that the title is changed to “Correlates of gender characteristics, health
and empowerment of women in Ethiopia”.
2. Abstract: The findings section of the abstract lacks anything significant about
one of the key concepts of the title of the paper- women’s health seeking
behavior. What was the key finding with regards to health seeking behavior of
women? Also the conclusions are based on gender equity and nothing is said
about health seeking behavior of women.
3. Background: The background of the manuscript seems to the deals with
socioeconomic status of women, gender disparities and low educational
attainment of women instead of the substantive issue of health seeking behavior
and it linkages women empowerment. It is expected the authors would have
reviewed literature on health seeking and how that is linked with the various
outcome and independent variables of the study. The background of the study as
it stands now is a bit misleading in comparison to the title of the manuscript. It is
extremely important to include studies on women’s empowerment and how that
is influenced by health seeking behavior. The theoretical perspective adapted for
the study does not contain any key variables that look at health seeking behavior.
Rather the perspective considers only variables that relates to women’s
empowerment. The authors should demonstrate how Kishor’s Framework
accommodates key health seeking behavior variables or how they can
incorporate health seeking behavior variables into the framework.
6. Discussions. I am wondering how most of the texts under the discussion
section particularly the sub-heading “ women’s health seeking behavior” could be
considered as discussion in this manuscript as it does not contain any facts
derived from the results. The key flaw in this is that it presents policy options of
the Ethiopian Government, which this study did not seek to evaluate. It will be
extremely helpful if the authors discuss their results in the light of these policies
instead of just stating them as discussions.
Minor revision
The authors should check the grammar and typographical errors in the
manuscript. For example page 1 line 21 which should read, “have improved”
stead of “have been improved”. There are several of these grammatical
construction which should be corrected through out the document.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
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 that I have no competing interests' below