Reviewer's report
Title:Sex Trafficking Awareness and its associated Factors among Youth
Females in Bahir Dar town, Northwest Ethiopia: A community based cross
sectional study.
Version:1Date:30 April 2014
Reviewer: Demewoz Haile
Reviewer's report:
Reviewer: B
Title: Sex Trafficking Awareness and its associated Factors among Youth
Females in Bahir Dar town, Northwest Ethiopia: A community based cross
sectional study.
Major compulsory comments
Abstract
Introduction: Comment #1: The last sentence of the background needs revision.
There are(were) no studies in Ethiopia that explores on sex trafficking awareness
of females about sex trafficking.
Methods: comment #2: write cross sectional study as one word”cross- sectional”
Result: Comment#3: the last sentence of the result section in the abstract “living
together with someone” had no AOR. You have to report that.
Comment # 4: what do you mean living with some one? It is not clear and I think
it was also understand differently by the respondents.
Comment # 5: you have assessed about the mediators of sex trafficking. What
did you assess specifically the mediators? Is that bout the awareness of those
youth females about the mediators or did you assess their experiences who
mediate them for sex trafficking?
Comment # 6: Revise the punctuation when you write the AOR and make them
consistent
Conclusion: Comment #7: Living with someone is not clear for your readers.
When you revise on the result you have to consider it in the conclusion also.
Introduction
Comment #8: I have no comment on the introduction and but needs some
revision for punctuation
Methods and Materials
Study design, area and population
Comment#9: Describe the proportion of youth females in the study community.
What is the percentage of youth females expected being out of school? Describe
if there are governmental or nongovernmental organizations working on gender
issues and sex trafficking?
Comment # 10: Those youth females who lived for the past six months in the
town were used as inclusion criteria. Please revise this sentence again. It has
grammar problem
Sample size and sampling techniques:
Comment #11: I think this sentence is “Household was used as a study unit to
interview study participants” is not correct. Study unit is the unit on which
information is collected. Off course sometimes the study unit is the same with
sampling unit. However in this case the household is the sampling unit while the
study unit is the female youths.
Comment #12: The other concern in this study is that most of the time this age
group “15-24years” is very active and difficult to access them in the house. Those
people are either in school or in work, some would be available in the house.
Therefore usually it is difficult to access them. The first question is that did you
consider those youth females who you got at the house only for the study? If that
is the case what can you say about the generalization? How did you select those
study subjects from the household if more than one youth females are available?
Here my fear is that since your study subjects are active, you may collect a data
from those who are inactive and available in the house during the data collection.
This brings unrepresentative information. Write clearly how you did your
sampling and whether you consider those active youth females who are out off
house when you go to the house for data collection.
Data analysis: comment #13 what is the criterion to enter your variables in the
multivariable model?
Result
Comment # 14: line number 10: Friends (87%) and brokers (74%) were
mentioned frequently as mediators for sex trafficking. How this was assessed? Is
that this is the knowledge of respondents that was listed by the respondents as a
mediators. Did this report from the respondents about the person who
approached them?
Discussion
Comment # 15: I have no major comment on the discussion but it needs English
and punctuation edition. The discussion was focused on the significant variables
only. The discussion also looks it hunt consistent findings only
Comment #16: you have to write the limitation of this study
Conclusion
Comment #17: you recommend to study the connection of brokers and but what
about studying the magnitude of the sex trafficking?
References
Comment # 18: you have many grey literatures and how do u see that?
Comment# 19: the reference should be revised according to the referencing style
of the journal and be consistent in listing the number of authors according to the
guideline
Tables
Comment #20: Table 2: what do others reference in the table? It should be listed
out?
Comment # 21: Has someone approached you to assist you in going abroad? I
am not clear with this question. Did you study those who have gone ever
abroad?
Comment # 22: Table 3: which variables entered to the multivariable regression
model? What is the criterion to enter in the multivariable model? Of course I have
asked you before.
Comment # 23: what is the association of internet with sex trafficking
awareness?
Comment # 24: what happen when you enter similar or highly correlated variable
to the model at the same time? Look on presence of Radio and television in the
house. You see , the percentages as well the COR of the two variable is more of
similar. This showed that the two variables are correlated variables. But in the
multivariable model only one is significant. This results multicolinearty. Please
remove one when you enter in the multivariable model and see the AOR again.
Comment #25: I think that you entered all variable to the final regression model
and reported only the significant in the multivariable model. Do not you think that
you are only hunting the statistically significant variable? This results bias
Comment # 26: look for the foot note of table 3
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have no competing of interest