Title: Associations between depressive symptoms, socio-economic factors, traumatic exposure
and recent intimate partner violence experiences among women in Zimbabwe: a cross-sectional
study
Version: 7 Date: 18 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
I would like to start by reiterating how important I feel this work is and what a meaningful
contribution this manuscript could make to the literature. It is great to see this manuscript moving
in the direction of publication. Still, the writing lacks some refinement and clarity. I did my
best to outline specifically where these issues come up in the following comments, and I look
forward to seeing the authors’ edits and responses. It is an honor to be part of the process of
making sure this research gets disseminated.
Recommended Grammatical Edits:
Overall, authors are inconsistent in their use of commas. Sometimes they are included where
they are needed, sometimes they are included where they are not needed, sometimes they are
used when listing a series, sometimes they are not used at all when using them would be helpful
with clarity. I think the use of commas is indeed mostly a personal writing preference depending
on one’s culture, but I would urge authors to choose a single style/set of rules and stick with
them throughout the manuscript, as I found it quite distracting from the meaningful content
being presented.
Lines 48-49: There is a double quotation at the beginning  of the quote  that is not needed
Line 60: Need a space between "vulnerable" and "to"
Line 60: "long term" should be "long-term" as it is describing "exposure"
Lines 62-64: Because multiple factors are being described at the beginning of the statement,
"exacerbates" should be changed to "exacerbate" or perhaps "may exacerbate" for clarity
Line 66-67: Same comment as above (need to change the verb to match with multiple nouns--
i.e., change "threatens" to "threaten"
Line 94: Should be "are" not "is"
Line 97: Need to match verb tense--"mitigates" should be "mitigate"
Line 102: Need a space between "are" and "evident"
Line 129: Need a space between "participation" and "(64)"
There are a number of spots in which parentheses appear one after another. For example, line
138, should read as (MWAGCD; 64) instead of (MWAGCD)(64).  Please correct throughout
the manuscript, as this occurs several times following line 138 as well.
Variable measurement section: per APA publication guidelines need spaces before and after all
statistical symbols, such as the equal sign. So, for example, instead of "Cronbach's alpha =0.88"
should read "Cronbach's alpha = 0.88"
Line 178: replace i.e. with :
Line 196: Need quotes around “Have you drunk alcohol in the past 12 months?” as it is a direct
quote/item from the AUDIT
Line 216: Do not need to capitalize structural equation modeling
Line 222: Need a space between “emergency” and “and”
Results section general comment: entire section needs to be in the past tense; currently, some
of it is and some of it is not—please address
Line 235: Instead of the : before “75%” could say “, and 75%” for grammatical consistency
Line 244: Confidence intervals should be reported as 95% CI [LL, UL]
Like the comment above for the Variable Measurement section, need spaces before and after
all <
Line 245: I think it is generally recommended to avoid the + sign in paragraph writing. Instead,
could say “21 or higher”
Line 258: Because a comparison is being made, I think “high” should be “higher”
Line 271: Should read as “show” instead of “shows”
Discussion section general comment: any writing referring to the results of the study should be
in the past tense; avoid language about findings being “proven” or “proved”
Line 287: Need a space between “region” and “(75-77)”
Lines 290-291: Need a hyphen for individual-level
Lines 292-293: Need hyphen for HIV-positive
Line 310: Previously the authors say “mental ill-health” but here it is “mental ill health” – please
fix to be consistent (comes up again on line 326)
Lines 320-321: Need hyphen for culturally-adapted
Line 331: I don’t think “a” is needed in front of longitudinal data
Recommended Content Edits:
Lines 69-71: This sentence was difficult to follow; please consider splitting it into two sentences
for clarity
Line 79: This may be more of a personal preference, but I typically view the abstract separately
from the introduction. So, when you're using an acronym for the first time in the introduction
(such as IPV), it would be helpful to outline what the acronym means again before using it
Line 82: Consider changing "life traumatic" to "traumatic life" as that is the phrase used in other
parts of the manuscript
Line 208-210: are “svy:” “ttests” and “mvtest” specific commands that can be used in Stata?
Generally, I think it’s better to explain exactly what these commands or functions do instead of
only naming the syntax code.
Line 212: I’m having trouble following this sentence; please clarify and add justification for the
p-value cutoff of 0.2
Line 220: The authors state that they are guided by the literature but no literature is cited; please
add in-text citations for literature being referenced as support for hypotheses
Line 302: Clarify the direction of resilience and recovery (e.g., is it better/worse, lower/higher)
Lines 319-310: Difficulty following this sentence
Questions
Line 131: Were any reasons provided as to why some women chose to participate and some did
not? If so, authors should consider briefly outlining why some chose not to participate.
Line 133: What were the parameters for someone to be considered as having missing or
incomplete data? Were any strategies to address missing data attempted?
Tables
This may just be in the version I downloaded, but the formatting for Table 3 appears off toward
the end of the table