Reviewer's report
Title:Assesment of Knowledge and Practice about Menustrual Hygiene among
Secondary High School Girls in Western Ethiopia
Version:2Date:13 March 2015
Reviewer: teketo kassaw
Reviewer's report:
General comment: please use uniform word or phrase for your study participants
as from ‘high school’ and do not use interchangeably with ‘secondary school’.
You can see it from your background, method, result, discussion and even the
tables and graphs too.
Major compulsory revisions
Title:
# Line 1: ‘assessment’ … ‘menstrual’ should be corrected and on line 2: please
remove ‘secondary’ as it is well known that high school by itself is indicative.
Background:
# Line 87 & 88: the sentence ‘known risk factors …’ is not clear and please make
clear it and should give sense.
# Line 97: A sentence should start with words rather than a figure …and thus
‘11% of girls in Ethiopia’ should be stated in word.
Methods:
# The sampling procedure should be rewritten!!
# Line 184-187 (Ethical consideration): needs lots of work and should be
rewritten!!!
# As you have mentioned your study participants were girls who already had
menarche. If it is so, how did you select them? What was your procedure? Was it
ethical? Please have a strong justification how you select them!!!!!!!!
# What was the age range of your study participants? How was the consent
taken for those who are under the age of consent?
# Data processing and analysis: Line 177 & 178: please indicate the dependant
as well as independent variables in bracket.
Discussion
# The discussion is a bit incomplete as it looks a repetition of result section and
the authors did not compare too much their results and observations with other
studies from around the world. They did not explore different possible bias and
limitations that could explain their findings in their study.
Minor essential revisions
Abstract: Methods part --- line 37: It will be better if you say it a school based
rather than ‘An institution’
Background: line 105: remove ‘secondary’
Methods:
# Line 112: Delete ‘institution’ and be better if you say school based as I have
said before.
# Line 116: remove ‘secondary’
# Line 119: --- 9th grade ‘was’ ---- and 10th grade ‘was’ --- should be were. --- the
girls who ‘were attained’ --- should be had attained
# Line 130: --- ‘students was’ be students were
# Line 134: Please use uniform phrase or word for the study participants and
would better if you use high school students rather than ‘secondary’ school.
# Please rewrite the data collection procedure in detail clearly!!!!!!!
# Line 171: what do you mean by ‘pre-arranged coding sheet’?
# Line 172 & 173: Data were not ‘was’ since data by itself is plural!!!!
Result:
# Line 191: ‘Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents were
represented in the table 1’: not important here rather indicate the table at the end
of the description of your pertinent results.
# Line 192: Please correct it as ‘A total of 828 high school girls were ‘participated’
making a response rate of 98%’; rather than ---- were responded to the
questionnaire----
# Line 199: ‘…ETB …’ please write in full since others might not understand it
well and you can write ETB in bracket.
# Line 200: the statement “Out of the total respondents (83.5 %) of their 200
family owend radio/TV” is clear. Did you mean ‘out of the total respondents 691
(83.5%) of their family had radio/TV? Please check it and make it sense!!!!!!!!!
# At the end of sociodemographic description you need to write the table number.
It may be ok if you cite the table after the statement “Out of the total respondents
(83.5 %) of their 200 family owned radio/TV”. It works for other descriptions too.
# Line 203-205: “The results of the study revealed that, 67.8% of the respondents
were got information about menstruation from their friends, followed by mass
media, teachers, from their mothers and book (Figure 1)” couldn’t be
sociodemographic characteristics rather it is knowledge part. Please check it!!
# Line 209: “Majority (76.9%)” is it out of 504 or 828? Please write the number
and then the percentage in brackets otherwise it will be difficult to appreciate the
difference and this comment will work for the whole manuscript.
# Line 207-215: needs a lot of work since it is not well narrated (it doesn’t seem
an article).
# Line 208: out of who did 330 (39.9%) had good practice?
# Line 219: ‘majority’? What is the total number? 330? 828? 504?
# Line 217-227: needs a lot of work since it is not well narrated. You should
indicate the number and the percentage in brackets as I had commented before
for the whole document.
# Line 219-220: Majority (82.2%) of girls’ were using pads and two third (66.2%)
of girls’ were using napkin as absorbent material during menstruation. What is
pad and napkin? Who did manage their menstrual bleeding correctly; 82.2% or
66.2%? Why? Who did use disposable sanitary pad/napkin? Who didn’t use it?
Who did use homemade cloth or rags other than disposable sanitary
pad/napkins? How do you state your finding? What do you mean by menstrual
hygiene?
# Line 220-221: More than half (52.9%) of the respondents were clean clothes
with soap and water. What does it mean? Not clear!!!
# Line 222-223: ‘Half (51.9%) of girls’ will change their pads or clothes three and
above times during menstruation’. Did you mean per day or till the end of
menstrual bleeding? Please make it clear and give life for your work!!!!!!!
# Line 223-224: One hundred sixty seven (20.2%) of the respondents were
disposing their used napkins correctly. What did you mean by correctly?
Disposing in to latrine, burning, throwing away on the open field? You should
operationalize it!!!!
# Line 224-225: One third (33.3%) of girls’ using paper to dispose the pads by
wrapping. What does it mean?
# Line 229-244: Please delete the sub-headings (Factors Associated with
Knowledge about Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene and Factors Associated
with Menstrual Hygienic Practices during Menstruation). You can write both the
analytical descriptions in one paragraph at the end of the knowledge and practice
part; i.e., line 216 and line 228 respectively. In addition to this please narrate it
well!!!
Limitation of the study
# They presented some limitation of the study, but they could have discussed
more in detail about the possible bias and problems of collecting information
about menstrual hygiene, ways of measuring the different factors (self-reporting,
confounding…).
Dictionary revisions
# Line 200: “owend” is not correctly spelled and you should check the whole
document since there are others too.
# There are editorial/spelling, grammar problems
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
# 'I declare that I have no competing interests'