Title: Hotspots and determinants of women’s discriminatory attitude towards people living with
HIV; Evidence from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey data
Version: 1 Date: 10 Jul 2022
Reviewer's report:
Title: Hotspots and determinants of women’s discriminatory attitude towards people living with
HIV: Evidence from EDHS 2016 data
Review comments:
The manuscript is well written and well discussed. I recommend the manuscript be accepted
with minor revisions.
In this manuscript, the authors attempted to study an important health topic, the Hotspots and
determinants of women’s discriminatory attitudes towards people living with HIV. There are a
few remarks that should be considered to improve the quality of the manuscript.
1. Background
The manuscript could have a line number so that comments will be aligned with subtopics and
lines.
• The background is filled with numbers. Most of the numerical data have to be rewritten in a
statement rather than squeezing the document with numbers.
• What is the rationale for picking the use of the 2016 Ethiopian demographic health survey
data to study determinants of discriminatory attitudes towards PLWH among reproductive-age
women? Please clearly justify the reason for using the EDHS data/survey?
2. Methods
Study area and setting:
• What does it mean in “…a number of instabilities” and how does it relate to the subtopic”, line
2 under the subtopic study and setting section? How is it related to the subtopic of the study?
Sample size and sampling technique
• A convinced sampling method was used to include 13,822 participants depending on the
interest of the researchers.
• What are the precise inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study?
Variables and measurement:
• Are adequate variables relevant to this study well captured in that DHS?
• What are the study measurements? Are measurements developed by the researchers or
borrowed from the other source? It is highly recommended that the source of the instruments
were clearly described. Is developed in line with the objective of the study, or are the instruments
part of the 2016 DHS?
Data collection:
• It was described that the data are openly available, however, data quality management issues
were not discussed. Data validity and reliability safeguarding methods employed were not
described. Therefore, it’s recommendable to address how data quality was handled.
3. Result
• The results were well presented but recommend rechecking the statistical results and figures.
4. Discussion
• In the discussion section, third paragraph, line 1, it was stated that “urban residents had more
than four times higher odds of discriminatory attitude as compared to rural residents”. Given
the alleged reality that urban residents have a better-placed in terms of knowledge of HIV and
education (numerous shreds of evidence exist for this realism), that contradicts the findings of
this study. Therefore, it’s highly recommended to cross-check the measurements of the study
and the data analysis employed.
Conclusion
• From this study, it’s clear that based on the findings of the study, adequate recommendations
were not made for policy makers or concerned bodies. Also, future study recommendation or
follow-up is not warranted in this study. Therefore, it’s recommended to put a way forwards
related to the topic of the study and findings.