Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Exploring the impact of a community participatory intervention on
women's capability: A qualitative study in Gulu Northern Uganda
Version: 
0 
Date: 
13 Oct 2020
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting paper that explores qualitative the question of whether a
participatory community-based intervention in post conflict Uganda can improve
women's agency given strong evidence that this approach is associated with
improvements in maternal and child health.
The paper is based on 14 in-depth interviews and 5 focus groups with up to 8
participants in one area of northern Uganda. 
How the individuals were chosen is
not detailed and the paper merely states that 'purposive sampling' was chosen but
not according to what criteria or research aims. 
More detail is needed on the
interviews and focus groups - why the focus group method was chosen and why
interaction among members was seen as important; how long these took and how
the data was validated with participants if at all. 
The group involved in writing the paper seemed to have been involved in both
the implementation of the intervention as well as the research. 
Would the women
have involved been honest with the researchers if there are elements that they
were not satisfied with? 
The author state that they were reflexive in analyzing
the potential impact on the research but more detail is needed in this regard. 
The paper is very well-researched on participatory approaches to addressing
maternal and child health but is less strong on the literature on capabilities
particularly pertaining to women and health.
Only two references on capabilities are cited. 
I recommend that the authors look
at the work of Giulia Greco (on Malawi including in Social Science and
Medicine) and more recent work on India (by Sahoo and Pradhan - Reproductive
health re status of the displaced tribal women in India: an analysis using
Nussbaum Central human capabilities in Health Care for Women International,
2020). For earlier more conceptual work, see DeJong on the application of
capabilities to reproductive health in the Journal of Development Studies. 
With more background on the use of the capabilities approach, the authors could
have been clearer in the conclusion what the research adds to the body of work
conceptually as well as empirically. 
In terms of more minor points, the conceptual framework should come before the
methods section and not be part of the methods section. 
Why the capabilities
approach was chosen could also be elaborated on more. 
On minor points, the punctuation and writing need improvement. 
There are many
errors of English (e.g. "we hold a meeting" p. 8). 
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