Title: Sexual violence and risk factors among Night Shift female College students in Hawassa
city, South Ethiopia, 2020
Version: 3 Date: 16 Apr 2022
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for allowing me to review the manuscript entitled “Sexual violence and risk factors
among Night Shift Female College Students in Hawassa City, South Ethiopia, 2020”. The
findings may have been leveraged as an input for an intervention to combat violence against
women, which is a major reproductive health issue in Ethiopia, particularly among adolescent
girls. By saying this, I have tried to forward the possible comments and suggestions to the
following page. The manuscript needs various modifications, especially in following the logical
framework of methodological aspects, and lacks stringent variable measurement.
Title page
• A full list of author information needs to be availed on the title page, not at the end of the
manuscript.
• It is not an article, since it doesn’t pass through the peer review process and, it would be better
to say a manuscript, rather than an “Article”
Abstract section:
• Background: need to define the problem, sexual violence, and the real gap to conduct the study
• Method: change the “bivariate” to “bivariable”
• Result:
# “The prevalence of past 12-month sexual violence was 202 (61.2%) 95% CI: (55.8, 66.4)
which includes rape, attempted rape and sexual harassment….” The prevalence/magnitude of
each form of violence(needs to be indicated)
# The difference between the rape and attempted rape needs to be well described in the method
section
# “having an illiterate father” better to substitute for the term “ having a father with no formal
education”
# The two variables identified as predictors (presence of multiple sexual partners, and Having
one sexual partner) were contradicting each other. How this could be?
• The majority of the covariates found to be predictors of SV were non-modifieable and this put
the novelty of the study at risk.
•   The conclusion and recommendation are not based on the findings of the study.
Background
• Replace “Introduction” with “Background”
• Try to define the violence in a more specific way toward the females' side
• the authors need to be more specific about the outcome of interest (SV). The Majority of the
statements were dealing with violence other than sexual violence like sexual abuse of children,
forced abortion, sexual abuse of mentally or physically disabled people, forced sterilization,
forced exposure to pornography, female genital mutilation, and trafficking for purposes of forced
prostitution ….
• Better to mention what initiatives and interventions have been done at the country level to
tackle this SRH problem
• The authors mentioned a study conducted on the prevalence of SV among night time students
and was 86.4%. so, what would be the significant difference from conducting this study in the
same study area?
• the background section needs a due emphasis on the coherence, paragraph structuring,
grammatical, and typological errors, and all require correction.
Methods and material
• The population of the study (source and study populations) should be well elaborated.
• Sample size determination: I couldn't appreciate the study's novelty because it used a p-value
from a study conducted in the same city with a remarkably similar population.
# What about the design effect, since the selection of study participants was started from private
and government, then colleges, departments, classes…. So, it would be better to put a design
effect into consideration
• Variable measurement
# The measurement of the outcome variable was less stringent and need to be make it more
scientifically plausible
# Some of the attributes of risky sexual behavior like alcohol consumption, chewing chat, and
cigarette smoking were completely missed and this might influence the findings of the study.
• Data analysis
# The HL test indicated that our final model was fit (p = 0.906).  this was too exaggerated and
I need further explanation.
• Data quality management
# Why did you conduct a pretest in Hawassa city, the same study area? Why aren't you at
Shashemene city or someone else?
Result
# The sample size was too small to infer the finding
# The number of study participants from each college had to be presented
# Better to compile  in one as “Sociodemographic characteristics of study participants” within
a single sub heading, rather than deviding it as students’ and parents’
# Merge Table1&2 into Table1
# Be consistent in the writing format, throughout the manuscript, especially across the tables
# None of the variables presented in the Table3 were operationalized
# A basic question regarding the variable “ being a night shift” was presented in Table8. What
does it mean? it doesn't give me a sense, since all of the study participants were a night shift
students
# Again, how did you measure the impact of low grades?
Discussion
# The discussion seems the result part
# The whole discussion was about comparing and contrasting the findings from other studies
which are one part of the discussion but the authors missed showing the public health importance
of the findings.
# There were some contradicting figures in the background and discussion parts
# What did you recommend in the end, given that the majority of the variables identified as
determinants were non-modifiable?
• Denying the reality that this study has been expected to have several shortcomings, the authors
failed to alert readers to be more cautious while reading and interpreting the findings.
• The whole manuscript needs due emphasis to correct the coherence, paragraph structuring,
grammatical, and typological errors.
Thank you!