Title: Multilevel analysis of women’s education in Ethiopia
Version: 1 Date: 04 Mar 2023
Reviewer:  Yibrah Hagos Gebresilassie
Reviewer's report:
Title of the reviewed paper: “Multilevel analysis of women’s education in Ethiopia”
Ref: Submission ID5fa9913d-1046-45d9-aba2-f3c1cb2581e0
Reviewer’s report
Reviewer’s comments to authors
Major comments,
Line 36: Section Introduction
Line 86 – 90: The authors critique the existing literature on women’s education as they are most/
all are qualitative and descriptive as a research gap. You can look as has been indicated in lines
86   90 “Many qualitative and descriptive studies were conducted at different components of the
globe on women's education and management (9-13). However, in view of the above literature,
this study is intended on the multi-level analysis of women's education in Ethiopia by using the
2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey data.” However, there are adequate quantitative
empirical researches/studies on women’s education. Thus, authors’ need to explicitly explain as
to why this research has been carried out (research or knowledge gap) and its contribution to
existing literature particularly on women’s education.
Line 91: Section materials and methods
Critical question: Why do you (authors) use data from the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and
Health Survey while there is available data for the 2019 Ethiopia Demographic and Health
Survey? You need to explain this major question or concern.
The paper is examined women’s education differences in Ethiopia as entitle “Multilevel analysis
of women’s education in Ethiopia”, so why do not you use the extended Oaxaca Blinder
decomposition approach than the one you employed. Here, I am not challenging you the way
the model you explained in your paper. But to exactly address the stated objective of your paper
that is examining the determinants of gender differences or variations in education across the
enumeration areas. Thus, you need to adopt the aforementioned technique. You are need to
response this methodological concern.
Line 114: Section Variables in the Study
Line 115 – 120: “The response variable of this study was the education level of women.
According to (14) education level is ordered as no education, primary education, secondary
education, and higher education. However, women’s age at first marriage, frequency of listening
to the radio, frequency of reading newspapers and magazines, frequency of watching television,
family’s Wealth index, and Religion were potential lower level predictors of women’s education,
while childhood place of residence, was the potential higher( enumeration area ) level predictor
of women’s education.”
Question: How do they (authors) categorised the variables (predictors or independent variables)
as potential lower and/or higher level predictors to women’s educational level or what is their
justification for that? Of course, they indicated as reference 14 (Education S. Ministry of
Education. Delhi; 2005.) indicated in line 357 of the paper to categorise level of education (as
no education, primary education, secondary education, and higher education).
Line 178: Section Results
I am not clear with “Furthermore, the majority of them were bored from the poorest income
level families (26.6%), … ” What do you mean by bored (from)?
Line 244 Section Multivariable Analysis
Line 252 Table 6 Final multi-level ordinal logistic regression model
Comment: The title of the table need to be improved that explain exactly the regression output.
What does the value in parenthesis of # #(Exp( # #))  indicate? You need to explicitly define
beneath the table.   Overall the regression output need to be improved or recombined.
Why do you report both the t vale and Pr > |t | statistical regression outputs while they indicate the
same thing, just they indicate whether the regressed variable(s) is (are) statistically significant
or not. Thus, you need to report either of them.
Question: Why Table (Table 1  6) of your results are without source beneath them; No indication
of significance levels for the statistically significant variables (for example: ***, **, and * level
indicates for 1%, 5% and 10% significant level), and other notes are not clearly indicated below
the tables (for example DF indicates what in Table 5, SE indicates what in Table 4, 6?).
Line 254: Section Discussion
I am not clear with “women bored from poorest, poorer, middle, and richer families were about
0.61, 0.40, 0.28, and…” line 277. What do you mean women bored from…? The same comment
on line 278
Overall, the discussion part of the paper need to be discussed in detail in comparison with other
studies (previous studies) related to the authors’ paper. Thus, this part (discussion) is poorly
discussion that requires more improvement.
Line 282: Section conclusions and
Line 286-287 “… such as higher and lower percentages of women enrolled in higher education
reported from the capital city (Addis Abeba) and Somali regional states.” If the higher percentage
of women enrolled is found in Addis and the lower in Somali regional state, at the end of
that paragraph has to be complemented or followed by comma (,) respectively. Otherwise, the
paragraph is incomplete.
Line 292 – 296: “This approach incorporates the effect of higher and lower level factors
separately and takes into account the effect of the grouping structure in the case of hierarchical
data, using single-level analysis by ignoring such grouping structure may provide spurious
results, so the multilevel approach is recommended for making effective decisions with
such hierarchical data.” In conclusion as indicated above, authors are expecting to conclude
based on the findings of their studies, however, instead the authors conclude the importance
(recommended) of the model that they have employed. Thus, authors need to enhance or improve
this section supplemented their recommendation.
Minor comments
Line 309: Section Abbreviations
Line 315 AIC:  was not defined
Line 321: Section Competing Interests
Line 322: The authors’ declared that there is no competing interests.
Improved (The) authors declared that there is no competing interests.
Line 324 (The) author does not have support or funding to report
Improved (The) authors don’t have any financial support or funding to report
Line 328: Section Acknowledgement
Line 329 (The) author should be authors (since there are two authors)
Overall, with these all concerns (major concern on use of old data, EDHS 2016 rather than the
recent EDHS 2019) and comments (the major ones), the authors of the paper need to modify
their work to get published.
Note: After incorporating and/or responding the authors to the questions and/or comments
provided above, can be accepted for publication.
Regards,