Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Commercial sex work among university students: A case study of four public universities in Ghana
Version: 
1 
Date: 
28 Dec 2020
Reviewer's report:
I thank the authors for preparing a manuscript on this interesting and understudied topic. As university
students working in the sex trade constitute a growing phenomenon and youths shoulder the burden of
more than half of all new STDs annually, this study sheds light on an important public health issue.
My major comments are as follows:
1. p.4. lines 14-17: the authors stated that "… quantitative components allows investigating prostitution
objectively…" whereas the quantitative data in this paper have only been used for respondent
characteristics and cost of service. Please consider re-stating the scope of quantitative data.
2. pp.5-6, lines 59, 4: Thematic analysis results not shown except challenges. I recommend providing
thematic analysis findings under each result sub-sections (reasons, experience, etc.) unless the respondent
excerpts capture the main themes.
3. p.6, lines 22-34: The UEW Research Ethics Policy (2018) states that all faculties shall have an ethics
committee under the UEW Ethics Board's supervision. Are bi-weekly academic research seminars of FSE
the same as the faculty ethics committee?
4. p.14, line 53 and p.18, line 7: It has been indicated that prostitution in/around university areas has
increased over time. This is an important finding and should be appropriately noted if this was found from
key informants.
5. In the discussion section, the authors need to compare their key findings with other studies. At this
moment, only two references were used for this purpose (both of these are newspaper articles, references
#23 and 24). I would recommend the authors to review published articles on prostitution among
university students from other countries and show how similar (or different) their study findings are. For
this exercise, some useful papers would be Roberts et al. (DOI: 10.1080/14681811003666507), Sinacore
et al. (https://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/article/view/60991), Imaledo et al.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489398/), Wylęgły
(https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=795560), Mengistu et al.
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-4755-10-38), and Masvawure (DOI:
10.1080/13691050903471441).
My minor comments:
1. The manuscript would be benefited from professional proofreading. There are issues with capitalization
and punctuation throughout the document.
2. The use of currency needs to be corrected. Please consider using GH¢ or GH₵ for instead of 'ghs' and
US$ instead of 'usd.' Also, it would be useful if US$ equivalent can be provided along with Ghanaian cedi
(e.g., GH₵ 20 would be equivalent to US$ 3.40).
3. p.15, line 7: Both "sugar mummies" and "sugar mommies" used in the text - I believe the latter is the
correct form.
4. p.18: The list of abbreviations needs to be updated. For example, ERC (or UCC) was not used in the
text.
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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?
Yes
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
Yes
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free from apparent
manipulation?
No