Title: Decreasing Reproductive and Abortion Care Barriers:  Findings on Student Health Center
Role from Student Survey
Version: 1 Date: 19 Dec 2022
Reviewer's report:
This is a well conducted survey addressing an important topic in reproductive healthcare for
young adults in the US. Overall the paper is written very clearly. I hope my comments will help
to improve clarity and ease of reading.
1) Lines 73-76. Consider rewording this sentence or breaking it into two sentences: “Research
shows most college students (89%) report their education goals would be negatively impacted
by having a child; women who do have diminished graduation rates; and 14% of people who
have abortions cite interference with education as a reason.” The phrase “women who do have
diminished graduation rates” threw me off. Perhaps this is the better stat to start the sentence
with, or it might work better to make this its own sentence.
2) Lines 156-8. Consider rewording this sentence or breaking it into two sentences: “To
understand the extent to which, and types of, barriers students face in accessing reproductive
care, participants were first asked to report which barriers make it difficult for them or their
partner to access reproductive health products and services generally.” The phrase “extent to
which, and types of, barriers students phase…” was a bit difficult to follow.
3) Lines 172-73. Consider rewording as “emergency contraception pills” rather than just
“emergency contraception.” I say this because it sounds like you asked about EC pills methods
only (see line 189), not EC methods that use intrauterine devices.
4) Lines 205-205. Consider rewording this sentence: “Any survey response that was not at least
half completed; did not consent to be the study; or did not respond to being 18+ at a California
State University was excluded from the dataset.” This would flow better as, “We excluded any
survey response that…”
5) Line 222. I recommend stating your total sample size (N = )
6) Lines 236 and 246. I recommend removing “very” (where you say “very highly
significantly”). I usually only see a result described as statistically significant or non-significant.
If you want to highlight ones that were “highly significant” I think that’s ok, but “very” just
feels like extra words. Also, this gives the reader the impression that the absolute differences
were huge, and in these cases the absolute differences were big (e.g. 50% vs. 68%) but not
exceedingly huge.
7) Line 296. Consider rewording this sentence or breaking it into two sentences: “Outreach
and support such as that to decrease stigma barriers for the majority of undergraduate students
who experience them, and to engage the 85% of trans/GE students who experience system
barriers in general care settings and are known to have disproportionately high levels of systemic
mistreatment in healthcare, are critical (18).” For example, it would be easier to read as,
“Outreach and support are critical, for example, to decrease stigma barriers…”
8) Table 1. Consider adding the stats about the whole student population (like you describe in
the text) into this table, i.e. incorporating Supplemental Table 2 info into Table 1.
9) Figure 1. Are the boxes with “Access Barrier” and “System Barrier” supposed to have the
bullet/icon before the text?