Title: Effect of Women's Empowerment on Lowering the Number of Children Ever Born in
Bangladesh
Version: 3 Date: 12 Nov 2024
Reviewer's report:
Abstract
Please write the full form since it was written for the first time
Please also mention at least one sentence on public health implication.
Background
In the introduction, starting with a brief overview of under-five mortality as a critical indicator
of public health, development, and well-being is an excellent approach. However, please include
global and regional statistics, emphasizing the importance of reducing these rates as a key part
of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Although the main objective of this paper is to assess the prediction, the public health
implications of mortality modeling should be explained. Elaborate on why reducing under-five
mortality is vital for long-term development. Briefly discuss the impact of high mortality rates
on communities and health systems, emphasizing the importance of timely interventions
First, please mention that under-five mortality is influenced by multiple factors, including
socioeconomic status, maternal health, access to healthcare, and environmental conditions.
Discuss the challenges these diverse factors pose for accurate prediction and risk assessment.
Then describe how traditional statistical approaches, such as logistic regression, have commonly
been used but may lack the ability to capture complex, non-linear relationships between
predictors and outcomes (Based on this type of data). Discuss the disadvantages of the logistic
model in this context, particularly its limitations in addressing the multifaceted nature of under-
five mortality.
Although the authors provide descriptions in the 'Related Study' section, they should focus more
on identifying the research gap and clearly stating the study’s objectives
Methods
Maternal nutritional indicators are very important for this outcome. Did you assess this? In
addition, if you are using the wealth index, variables like toilet facilities, drinking water, TV, and
radio should not be included, as the wealth index is constructed using these types of variables.
Why have you chosen SMOTE instated of others class-balanced technique? How have you
confirmed that dataset is oversampled?
Why have you chosen only tree-based ensemble machine learning algorithms? Did you consider
support vector machines or other methods? Additionally, there is no clarification on how the
parameters of the machine learning algorithms were selected.
Results
You should clarify whether it is a classification or regression approach. If it is a classification
approach, why have you reported the 'Average Squared Error'? If it is a regression approach,
where are the MSE and R-squared values? Additionally, I noticed that for evaluating machine
learning techniques, you emphasize AUC-ROC. However, for imbalanced datasets, several
studies have found that metrics like Matthews correlation coefficient or AUC-PR are more
informative than AUC-ROC.
Discussion
Without external validation, we cannot claim the "effectiveness of the ensemble method" with
full confidence.
Many published papers on mortality, although not focused on predictive performance, discuss
contributing factors in detail. The authors should correlate their findings with those studies.
Specifically:
• What is new? Clarify what unique insights this study adds.
• What has already been done? Reference existing work in the field.
• Comparison between findings: Compare this study's results with findings from related research.
Finally, the authors should mention limitations at the end of the discussion, particularly
regarding variable selection or any lack of relevant variables.
Conclusion
Conclusion should not be long