Reviewer’s report
Title:  Self-reported  depression  and  social  support  are  associated  with  egocentric  network
characteristics of HIV-infected women of color
Version: 0 Date: 07 Mar 2019
Reviewer: Thomas Valente
Reviewer's report:
This MS reports on a study that examined the association between depression and social support.
Financial support was associated with decreased reports of depression whereas emotional support was
associated  increased  social  support.   Less  frequent  communication  with  one's  primary  alter  was
associated with decreased support.  This study suggests that network characteristics affected reported
social support which in turn is important for HIV treatment care.
I  have  two  substantive  comments  and  several  minor  ones.   First,  it  is  unclear  why the  authors
constructed their scales by summing the item responses.  This creates problems if there are any missing
responses since missing values will depress scale scores.  (It is not reported how missing data were
treated.)  Moreover, it makes interpretation of scale scores more difficult to interpret as with summing
the  value  cannot  be interpreted  as  to  where  the  respondent falls  on the scale.   I would suggest
calculating all scales as averages.
Second,  the  paper  would  greatly  benefit  from  a  diagram  displaying  the  proposed  hypothesized
relationships.  This should be relatively easy to do and would substantially to the paper's value.
Minor edits:
p. 4: "Knowlton et al."
p. 5 & 16: Disclosure is an important variable and Valente et al, 2009 show that disclosure is associated
with willingness to recruit network members into a vaccine trial ("Using social networks to recruit an
HIV vaccine preparedness cohort).
p. 5: the sentence starting  with "Importantly, …" I think could be re-written more clearly.
p. 7: "/"
p. 13: "Similar to the findings for social support, talking less than daily the first named alter …"
Insert to as in "less than daily to the …"
It seems to me that this finding is not supported as the confidence interval crosses zero.
p. 14: " … women named, on average, 3 alters in their …" 
it seems to me they named about 4, 1.9 family and 1.9 non-family
p. 15: Reich et al.
p. 29: Table 3.  It seems to me it would be more accurate to say "Ties that were considered providing
emotional support" rather than "count of emotional support ties."
Are the methods appropriate and well 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.
Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately 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
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