Reviewer ’s report  
 
Title: An explorat ory study of knowledge, attitudes and beliefs related to tobacco use and 
secondhand smoke among women in Aleta Wondo, Ethiopia  
 
Version: 0 Date: 07 Jul 2017  
 
Reviewer: Monique Chaaya  
 
Reviewer's report:  
 
This is a descriptive study to assess Ethiopian women's attitudes towards, and knowledge and 
beliefs about tobacco use and second hand smoke in a rural area of Ethiopia.   The authors justify 
the study in terms of lack of sufficient information on the topic and the concern that the sub 
Saharan region will witness an increase prevalence of smoking.  The increase is not among 
females w ho currently have very low rates of smoking  especially cigarettes but the exposure of 
females to second hand smoke. Moreover since Ethiopia recently adopted the WHO FCTC and 
passed comprehensive tobacco control legistlation. Therefore this data could be u sed as baseline 
data at the early implementation of the law.  
The authors state that "the purpose of the present study was to explore rural Ethiopian women's 
KABs related to maternal tobacco use and SHS exposure, and the influence of a number of 
contextual factors on these KABs, including khat use, current exposure to pro - and anti -tobacco 
messaging, and the influence of religion on tobacco related attitudes". However they did not 
present data on  influence   
Of contextual factors on KAB.  
Methods: I don't u nderstand well the inclusion criteria c and d .  why only women who have 
children <12 and who cook?  
Selection was done properly and randomly.  
In the data analysis . it is not clear how they mention data stratified by urban/ rural.  Classifying 
women in a  rural town as urban is misleading. . they mention that groups were compared using t 
tests… the statement is very general and need to identify which groups? Urban rural. No tables 
are shown stratified by urban /rural .  
First paragraph of the results , line  17not clear. it says" it says among those classified as poor 
(48), the intensity in the households and they refer to n=271 ??? too confusing this sentence.  
Since authors do not have a hypothesis in mind to compare rural town /rural the statistical  
differ ence reported with their p values are not informative.   
Page 10 line 44, authors talk about a composite variable that was not discussed earlier and then 
they reported that they did analysis of knowledge with several socio demographic variables. Why 
and th e data is not shown.  
P 11 line 14 -26 not in any table???  
P 12 , paragraph addressing exposure to anti tobacco messaging, the comparison between urban 
and rural and reporting a p of 0.05 not necessary or justified .  
 
Discussion  
A long discussion with repetition of results. Need to be shortened to focus on meanings and 
implications  
Tables are ok but some variables with small percentages could be removed and only referred to 
in text such as cigarette use and smokeless tobacco use.   
And whenever a variable has several categories it is advisable to put them in descending order 
based on their percentages  
Are the methods appropriate and wel l described?  
If not, please specify what is required in your comments to the authors.  
 
Yes 
 
Does the work include the necessary controls?  
If not, please specify which controls are required in your comments to the authors.  
 
No 
 
Are the conclusions drawn adequat ely supported by the data shown?  
If not, please explain in your comments to the authors.  
 
Yes 
 
Are you able to assess any statistics in the manuscript or would you recommend an  
additional statistical review?  
If an additional statistical review is recommended , please specify what aspects require further  
assessment in your comments to the editors.  
 
I am able to assess the statistics  
 
  
Quality of written English  
Please indicate the quality of language in the manuscript:  
 
Acceptable  
 
Declaration of competing interests  
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3. Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the  
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