Reviewer’s report
Title: 
The impact of effective communication skills training on the status of
marital burnout among married women
Version: 
0 
Date: 
23 Mar 2021
Reviewer's report:
This study aimed to determine the effect of effective communication skills
training intervention on marital burnout among married women referring to
health centers in Iran. Overall, I cannot say that it adds anything new to the
existing body of literature. There is a number of issues that I believe should be
addressed. The entire document needs copy-editing and proofreading for
language and grammatical errors. Please find thereafter my comments.
Abstract:
* Please add the duration and frequency of the training sessions of the
educational intervention in the methods section. 
Background:
* Line 31-35: Please add a citation to the definition of marital burnout.
* Line 10-14: authors claimed that : " The reason for choosing women as the
target group of the study is that the rate of marital burnout in women is reported
to be higher than men". This sentence is misplaced. You introduced the reasons
for choosing to include women while you have not yet spoken about the study. It
would be better to formulate as follows : "The rate of marital burnout in women
is …".
* Clearer hypotheses are needed. Please add hypotheses for each aim.
Methods
* It is important to mention the frequency of the training sessions.
* Inclusion criteria are unclear. Have women who presented with actual
substance use or physical illness been included? 
* Another issue I came across relates to the fact that authors did not measure
many important variables which could affect the couples' life and lead to martial
burnout, such as length of marriage, number of children and family income.
These variables could act as additional confounders and should, at the very least,
be acknowledged as a limitation.
Discussion
* The first paragraph unnecessarily repeats the study objectives, while it should
summarize ALL main results.
* I believe that the discussion section would be much stronger if it provided
specific implications of the results to help women remedy the problems
associated with marital burnout. These recommendations should be supported by
studies of empirically supported interventions. 
Table 2:
* What "relative" means here? Please specify.
* I think it is important to specify the participants' age in each group. What there
any significant difference between the two groups regarding age?
Table 3:
* Line 30-33: This table row is useless.
* Line 33-36: Authors specified "IR" (Interquartile Range), but there is a number
not a range. Please revise.
Finally, there are significant grammatical errors, misspellings and formatting
issues which alter the meaning of sentences. The text also included odd syntax
and word choices that obscured his content, making some sentences
incomprehensible. I acknowledge the significant difficulty in preparing a
manuscript in a language other than your primary language, and respect the
effort that this requires. I believe that the entire document needs thorough copy-
editing and proofreading for language and grammatical errors, to ensure
readability and precision. For this, authors should ensure that someone very
proficient in WRITTEN English has checked their manuscript.
I hope that these comments will be helpful.
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Declaration of competing interests
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conflicts of interest: none.
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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?
No
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
No
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free
from apparent manipulation?
Yes