Title: Sexual assault and vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections among homeless
Brazilian women: a cross sectional qualitative study
Version: 2 Date: 09 May 2023
Reviewer's report:
Comments
Thank you dear editor for providing me the opportunity to review this important point of public
health concern.  Thank you dear author for touching this crucial health concept and is truly a
major area of public health issue. Here under are some comments and suggestions to help you
improve your paper.
ABSTRACT
-line 23-25: I have observed a slight discrepancy between the statement you wrote as aim in
your title as the aim intends to explore about the RH issues which is wider than the scope of
your title. Better if you amend it
-Why you plan to explore the issue qualitatively only using interviews?
- I thought that there could be other possible themes like ‘‘the way they were exposed to those
sexual assaults’’ and ‘’the coping mechanisms to those assaults’’. it will be nice if you explain
more on the themes you identified
-better if you put in short were they and how they were vulnerable to STDs here too
INTRODUCTION
well written. but consider the following g for better improvement
-I have found that the logical order of your introduction has some limitations. Please put the
ideas you have paraphrased or synthesized in the way like from global to local, past to present
and border to narrower concepts. e.g. line 16-21 should be written before line 9-15. Also go
through all your  introduction section
- The way you try to connect ideas between statements and paragraphs should be improved to
give a clear sense of points you want to mention. e.g. between paragraph 2 and 3
STUDY DESIGN AND POPULATION
-which type of cross-sectional study you have employed? Was it exploratory? Phenomenological
(as you said it was the experience of the participants that was interviewed in the data collection
section) . put it to specific
-why you excluded women below 18 years as they are supposed to be more vulnerable to such
problems?
-how do you evaluate weather the participants are in a state of ‘‘absence of evidence of acute
mental health events and psychotic hallucinations’’?
-why only those who speak Portuguese were included? why not you consider translation rather
than excluding only on the bases of language they spoke /
-it could not be only those in extreme poverty who are subjected to such conditions. what about
those with health issues like mental health problems and refugees ? please consider it and explain
a strong justification.
STUDY SETTING
-why you choose the female foster home for your study? do not you think it was nice to collect
data on the spot or in the streets ?
DATA COLLECTION
-explain more on how you probe to get in depth information
-how do you come up with biases and attention span? Did not your participants get out of the
points? if so, how do you try to bend them to the point of interview
DATA ANALYSIS
-if do not use no software, how do you come up with last points of your data analysis?  Have
you used ‘‘color coding’’ or any other means  of manual qualitative data analysis methods
TABLE 1: if possible consider use of other more explanatory thematic categories
-why you choose ‘social gender relationship’ as the concept for your analysis?
-it was nice if you elaborate more on the trustworthiness each point by point as it is very critical
for a qualitative study.
RESULT
Well written. there are some minor quotation errors. please correct them
Table 2: try to make it standard table only with upper and bottom boarders
-I can not clearly identify the the exposure status of the respondents tom STDs in your result
section. why?
DISCUSSION
-line 1-9: is it a right practice to compare a qualitative study of 15 participants with a quantitative
study with 300 participants? also try to justify the discrepancies
-nothing is discussed about the vulnerability to STDs as it was one main objective of your study
why you put not interviewing focal women in the context of the streets but in a social shelter
as a limitation? why did not toy conduct it?
-Your list of abbreviations should be in alphabetical order
-Some references are not complete and some are too old. e.g. ref. 4., 13, 14 ,15 amongst others.
Please use up-to-date data and full recommended way of referencing for articles, books or other
sources
-MORE GENERALLY, THERE ARE SOME GRAMMATICAL ERRORS, PUNCTUATION
MISTAKES, AND FONT SIZE ISSUES. GO THROUGH ALL YOUR DOCUMENT TO
CORRECT THEM
-