Title: Prevalence of falls among adult mothers in Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional study
Version: 0 Date: 07 Aug 2023
Reviewer:  Tarek Tawfik Amin
Reviewer's report:
BMC Women’s Health
Title: "Prevalence of falls among adult women in Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional study".
Comments to the authors:
- The novelty of this study is quiet questionable as many similar researches came out of KSA,
although the authors targeted different age group (18-49 years) but without convincing the
readers why this age group is important to study falls and the consequences.
- The data collection which was self-reported in all domains, the statistical analysis which is
inappropriate and data presentation are the main problems for this manuscript that need great
attention.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29326189/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9842980/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167494319301001
https://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/content/article/36/152/full/
specific comments:
- Abstract:
Writing problems and careful attention of using phrases like (Herein???) should be revised.
Use the term “Period Prevalence” which needs to amend although the manuscript and provide
its’ calculation in the method section.
The results section in the abstract:
- Add confidence intervals for the prevalence figures.
- Use nominator / denominator (73/139)
- The conclusion section is repetition of the results
Introduction:
- The prevalence of falls varies depending on country, sex, and age-group – explain this, how
by country?
- In particular, females have 1.3 times higher odds of falls than males (remove Odds).
- A recent systematic review and meta-analysis found that older adults in the Gulf Cooperation
Council countries- age groups included in this metaanalysis?
- In these populations- what were these populations?
- What is your rationale to conduct this study? What it will add to the existing body of literature?
What are the practical implications? All these points should be addressed in this section.
- The objective of the study was to estimate the period prevalence of fall (this not possible using
the cross-sectional online research) you need to adopt a longitudinal follow up cohort to answer
your research question.
Study design and participants:
- The ethical considerations and ethical approval should be placed at the end of the method
section.
- You have to start with clarify the age groups targeted, settings, design adopted, etc.,
- The inclusion criteria especially having at least one child or delivery, should be explained?
- The data collection section, this section is badly written, first start with tool (deign, literature
used, no. of sections, no. of items in each section and their format, language used, existing
reliability / validity measures and the results of your pilot testing (if any)
- Then followed by administration, platforms used, how participants were invited, data
confidentiality, etc.,
- The items included in the data collection form should be fully described and not let pop up
in the results section.
- In inquiring about falls, use standardized questions from previous literature and verify its
construct.
- No sample size was calculated? And how the investigators select their participants?
Statistical analysis:
What were your outcome variables?
This section is confusing and needs clarification, your variables are mostly nominal or
categorical in nature, binomial analysis is required with reporting of the Odds ratios and 95%
confidence rather than Chi-square test.
How your outcome variable (fall) was adjusted and to what possible confounders?
Results:
- Reporting your results using median, interquartile range is preferred.
- Report the period prevalence if possible
- The pile of possible confounders was not mentioned in the methods section such as asthma,
chronic diseases, drug intake etc.,
- Your results owing to problematic data collection, data analysis and interpretation would result
in overstepping conclusion (hypercholesterolemia and falls for example)
The discussion section and conclusion should be amended accordingly
The reference should be stated in accordance with the journal instructions to the authors.