Reviewer ’s report  
Title: Pupil's perspectives on Female Genital Cutting abandonment in Harari an d Somali regions 
of Ethiopia.  
 
Version: 2 Date: 13 Feb 2018  
 
Reviewer: Nazar Shabila  
 
Reviewer's report:  
This is an import and interesting to read study related to assessing the perspectives of a sample of 
male and female pupils on FGC abandonment in Harari an d Somali regions of Ethiopia. The 
main focus of the study is related to the support to the abandonment of FGC and its association 
with the source of information about FGC and some other factors.  
 
I think that the manuscript needs some essential revision be fore I can recommend it for 
publication.  
 
The Background section and the subsection of "Factors that influence the abandonment of FGC" 
are too long and they can be substantially shortened with having the focus on the prevalence and 
factors related to pract icing FGC in the study settings.  
 
Methods section:  
Either remove the subsection headings (Study Design and Analysis) or provide divide this 
section into all subsections (Study design, setting, sample, tool, data collection and data 
analysis).  
It is mention ed that the two study areas were purposely selected, but nothing is mentioned why 
they were selected.  
Why and on what base did you choose only two schools (1 primary and 1 secondary) in each 
region and why more schools were not selected. This could be a ma jor limitation of the study as 
one school might not well represent all the schools in the region. It is mentioned that there are 
private and public schools in each region, but nothing is mentioned if the selected schools were 
private or public and how this  might have affected the findings and their generalization. It is also 
not clear who go to private schools and who go to public schools in these particular settings.  
 
One of the inclusion criteria is being 16 -22 years old. However, I can see that primary s chools 
were selected for the study. I am not familiar with this setting, but in most other settings we can 
not have 16 years and older in primary schools.  
Please provide more information about the questionnaire used in the study. How it was 
developed and w hat were its contents in addition to more information about its validation.  
 
More details are needed about the criteria for selecting the factors for multivariate analysis.  
 
Results:  
It would be useful if you provide a simple description of the sample characteristics (by gender, 
age, setting, primary/secondary or public/private schools) and the response rate at the beginning 
of the Results section. This could be provided through a simp le table.  
 
Page 9 (lines 24 -36); I think it is more important to mention in the text the high percentage of 
incalss information (53.3%), which is high in both regions than other sources such as the internet 
(43% in one region). This fact could be emphasize d in the discussion and used as a 
recommendation.  
Please rephrase the sentence (page 10, lines 2 -7) that starts with "Among 246 female 
participants....." to reflect the actual meaning of the percentages.  
It is a bit redundant to make the association betwee n support abandonment and factors related to 
knowledge/perspective like types of FGC, first criteria for marriage, male involvement, types, 
perform on future girls. Chi -square tests the relationship between independent and dependent 
factors, but such relat ionships cannot be given to the above factors.  
 
Conclusion  
It is way beyond this study to say that "the study shows an impressive improvement in both the 
prevalence of FGC among school girls and pupils' attitudes toward the practice"  
The conclusions and re commendations should go in line with the study objectives and the main 
findings.  
 
Are the methods appropriate and well described?  
If not, please specify what is required in your comments to the authors.  
No 
Does the work include the necessary controls?  
If not, please specify which controls are required in your comments to the authors.  
Unable to assess  
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the data shown?  
If not, please explain in y our comments to the authors.  
No 
Are you able to assess any statistics in the manus cript or would you recommend an 
additional statistical review?  
If an additional statistical review is recommended, please speci fy what aspects require further 
assessment in your comments to the editors.  
I recommend ad ditional statistical review  
Quality of written English  
Please indicate the quality of language in the manuscript:  
Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited  
Declaration of competing interests  
Please complete a declaration of competing interests, considering the following questions:  
1. Have you in the past five years received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an  
organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this 
manuscript, either now or in the future?  
2. Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organisation t hat may in any way gain or lose 
financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future?  
3. Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents  relating to the content of the 
manuscript?  
4. Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that 
holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript?  
5. Do you have any other financial competing interests?  
6. Do you have any non -financial competing interests in relation to this paper?  
If you can answer no to all of the above, write 'I declare that I have no competing interests' 
below. If  your reply is yes to any, please give details below.  
 
I declare that I have no competing interests  
 
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