Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Menopause Is a Natural Stage of Aging: A Qualitative Study
Version: 
0 
Date: 
20 Aug 2020
Reviewer: 
Narjes Bahri
Reviewer's report:
Dear Authors 
Thanks a lot for your concerns about the menopause as an important fields of
health. I read your valuable work carefully and find it well. However, I suggest
you some points and I hope my comments help you to improve the quality of
your paper. 
Abstract 
- Please explain in the last sentence of Introduction about the aim of study.
- Please provide more detail information about demographic characters of the
participants, i.e. age, setting and so on. 
- Please introduce the specific method of data analysis.
- In the Result, please mention the number of initial codes and categories. 
Introduction
- The statistics used is very old. for example, the references of lines 14, 15 is
belonged to 2010 (ten years ago!!!!). It is necessary to update the statistics about
the menopause population. 
- Please provide some reports about the number of menopausal women
population in Sri Lanka, as well as their common health problems. 
- Authors can used some updated studies that are conducted about menopausal
experiences among Asian women, i.e. following: 
*Bahri N, Latifnejad Roudsari R. "Moving from uncertainty toward acceptance":
a grounded theory study on exploring Iranian women's experiences of
encountering menopause. Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology
2020 May, 14(2): 154-164
*Bahri N, Latifnejad Roudsari R, Azimi Hashemi M. "Adopting Self-sacrifice":
How Iranian Women Cope with the Sexual Problems during the Menopausal
Transition? An Exploratory Qualitative Study. J Psychosom Obstet Gynaecol.
2017 Sep; 38(3):180-188.
- It is not clear the cause of suing qualitative approach for the study rather than
quantitative approach and it is necessary to clarify the issue.
Method
- In page 6, line 36: what is mean about "acute illness"? please pointed to some
of them.
- Qualitative researches are context based and their results are generalized only
to the target population. Therefore, it is very important to provide precious detail
information about the characters of study setting and participants. 
- In page 8, line 16 Please complete the sentence: describe by….?
- Please clarify which method of analysis were used, i.e. Granhiem? Constant
comparison or else one ....
- - please explain more detail about the exact numbers of codes, subcategories
and categories. 
- Please provide an important section as: Rigor of the study.
- Please mention about using the software i.e. MAXQDA …
Results
- It is necessary to add some important characters of the participants in the end
of each quotation such as age, education and career. 
- What is mean using the mentioned numbers after the quotation of a
participants? 
- For better understanding of readers, it is seriously recommended that to use
more of the participant's quotations. 
Discussion
- The references used for discussion is very old, seriously recommended using
updated and related studies.
- Please suggest some idea for the future studies in this field. 
References
- The references are very old, seriously recommended using updated and related
studies.
- Books are secondary sources, please replace the books by update papers. 
Best regard
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Declaration of competing interests
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
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Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
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from apparent manipulation?
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