Reviewer's report
Title:Health Belief Mode constructs as factors associated with Breast
Self-Examination behavior in a sample of women in Bandar Abass, Iran
Version: 3Date:7 May 2009
Reviewer: Nursen O Nahcivan
Reviewer's report:
Title:Health Belief Mode constructs as factors associated with Breast
Self-Examination behavior in a sample of women in Bandar Abass, Iran
This version of manuscript seems much improved but is stil not reached a
publishable standard. My comments are below. I hope this comments are helpful
for the authors.
Major Compulsory Revisions
1. Page 3, last paragraph, the authors state that “Despite the well-known benefits
of BSE, studies indicate that the rate of breast cancer screening test like BSE is
lower than expected”, but no reference is presented for this assertion. Is BSE
presumed as a breast cancer screening test?
2. Page 5, second paragraph, What do the authors mean when they write that “in
this study the health motivation subscale was not used because this variable is
not a separate construct of HBM (21, 24)”? It is not clear for the readers, please
rewrite the sentence in a more clear way.
3. The term of BSE measure is still confusing due to response categories. For
example, why did the authors label the BSE measures in different forms such as
performing/not performing? performers/non performers? BSE practising/ never
performed? With and without BSE behavior? Which one is preferenced? Also,
the authors mention that “BSE has been considered REGULAR if it had been
done one time per month for at least three months (n=17) ”, and “BSE has been
considered IRREGULAR if it has not been done monthly or been done less than
three months (n=59) ” in Table 1. Later, authors refer to perform BSE behavior as
yes (n=76, regular and irregular) and no (n=164, never doing). Therefore;
a. Page 9, third paragraph, the interpretation is misleading. “The results of this
study showed that participants who performed BSE monthly, perceived more
BSE benefits, less BSE barriers and more BSE self-efficacy than those who did
not this behavior on regular (?) basis.”
b. Also,in the abstract, the sentence “Perceived benefits/ barriers and perceived
self efficacy of the studied women who performed breast self examination
regularly (?) were significantly higher than those who did not it(?) (p < 0.03)”
should be corrected.
Minör Essential Revisions
1. The title: The words “Bandar Abbas” should be removed from The title
sentence. The word “mode” should be corrected as “model”.
2. The words “Bandar Abbas” ? Bandar Abass? should be rewritten in correct
style in the text.
3. Selecting every tenth women is not selected at random. I think the word
randomly should be removed from the description of the sample selection
process.
4. Page 5, in Third paraghraph, There is a spelling mistake in the words “Sebahat
and Ilknur”.
5. In table 1: only the education level of “primary , secondary ve university” are
written. But “high school” or the education years of “9-11 years” should be added.
6. There are spelling errors in the references 26 and 27. These should be
corrected.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests