Reviewer’ s report
Title: Breast Cancer Screening Beliefs Questionnaire: psychometric Properties of the Persian
version
Version: 0Date: 23 Jun 2020
Reviewer: Joseph Abi Jaoude
Reviewer's report:
The authors present a cross-sectional study of Persian women presented with a translated version
of the Breast Cancer Screening Beliefs Questionnaire. The authors analyzed the results of thisquestionnaire and conclude that it has acceptable validity. This topic would be of interest to thereaders of BMC Women's Health, as such translations could be of use in different non-Englishspeaking countries.The authors do a good job with the translation of the questionnaire. Also, they go in depthregarding the methodology of the questionnaire and survey. Overall, the paper is fine, but quitedifficult to read through and comprehend. The main issue is the use of non-conventional statistics,that most readers will not be used to. As such, I suggest that the authors spend more timeexplaining the statistical methodology, and how to interpret the results.
Abstract:The background and Methods section are too lengthy, and the results section too short. I suggest
shortening the background and Methods and adding some key results.
Introduction:
"first leading cause of cancer-related death among women worldwide" Is this statement true? Justsomething the authors might want to double check, as recent statistics are changing and thereference they use is quite old. Could be that lung is the leading cause of cancer death now. Also,the authors should cite the most recent Ca: A journal for clinicians' reference instead of the tworeferences they use.
Methods:
"sample sizes for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses" Please explain what is meant byexploratory and confirmatory analyses before mentioning those terms.I would also spent some time explaining what is meant by "psychometric", as this is the entirepoint of the paper, but the term is not really obvious to understand."The instrument of the study was BCSBQ developed by Kwok et al. in 2010." Add reference."The developers of the questionnaire found that it has three subscales and reported a Cronbach'salpha of 0.84 for it" Please explain what this entails, as many readers might not understand thesignificance of this statistic.
Results:
Please write "Results" instead of "Result".
Please present age as median and range (or Interquartile range) instead of mean and standard
deviation."More than one third of them had university degrees and was employed", should be "wereemployed"Many parts of the results section are just explaining methodology, and hence should be moved tothe Methods section. Only include the results in the "Results" section, and not how you got thoseresults. This should be moved to the Methods.
Discussion:
"Findings revealed a three-factor": Please add "Our findings"
The discussion should focus more on the relevance of your findings… How will this translation
impact women as part of a healthcare initiative? How will this affect screening rates? The authorsspend a good amount of time explaining their results, which is fine owing to the nature of thisstudy, and the difficulty understanding all the results (as I previously mention). But the authorsshould also spend more time discussing how will those findings eventually impact policy, andpublic health.The limitations section is only one sentence, while the study obviously has more limitations(relatively small sample size… only 3 regions of the country were targeted…). Please elaborate on
that part."Implications for clinical practice The Persian BCSBQ can be used in healthcare centers andgynecology clinics to assess Iranian women's beliefs about BC screening. The results of suchassessment can help develop and use educational and counseling interventions for correctingwomen's misconceptions and improving their knowledge about BC screening." Those parts shouldbe moved and elaborated on in the discussion. Writing 2 sentences on that is not enough, and Isuggest the authors spend some times discussing the following parts. Also, it would be interestingto compare to other countries that already used a translated version of the questionnaire, and ifthey had any change in policy, screening rates…
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YesDoes the work include the necessary controls?
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