Reviewer's report
Title:Print versus a Culturally-Relevant Facebook and Text Message Delivered
Intervention to Promote Physical Activity in African American Women: A
Randomized Pilot Trial
Version:2Date:13 December 2014
Reviewer: Yu-Mei Schoenberger
Reviewer's report:
Reviewer's report
Major Compulsory Revisions
1. The purpose of the manuscript needs to clearly defined in the last paragraph
of
the introduction.
2. Provide explanation as to why Facebook was not used to recruit participants.
3. What was the purpose of recruiting only 24-49 year olds?
4. Was level of skill/knowledge/usage of Facebook assessed? A lurker vs an
active user most likely will provide different results.
5. How many text messages were in the library of messages? Did messages
include a reminder to visit the Facebook group?
6. Authors provide an example of a text message for information on how to
overcome barriers to PA (line 167), which is for women who have children. Were
the text messages tailored based on participant characteristics?
7. Email was a big part of the intervention, especially in staying in contact with all
participants and obtaining physical activity data. Readers do not know this until
farther in the paper. Authors need to discuss the use of email earlier in the paper.
Authors indicate participants emailed or texted their daily step counts to staff.
Which was used more frequently? Provide an explanation as to why email was
used over texting only.
8. Authors indicate that there was no significant change in physical activity from
baseline to 8-week based on accelerometer measures. This only took one week
into consideration. Did authors look at the pedometer data during the 8 week of
intervention? Was there an increase during the weeks?
9. It is interesting that less than 50% of PI participants were satisfied or very
satisfied with the program; however, almost 90% of participants indicated they
would recommend the PI program to a friend. Authors should discuss why they
think this occurred.
10. Authors state the number of comments made for each weekly group
discussion topic. Authors should indicate the number of participants making
comments. For example, in week 1 there were 4 comments. Were the 4
comments from 4 different participants or just 1 participant?
11. When participants commented on a group discussion topic, did authors
comment on the participant comment?
12. Authors indicated that modest participant engagement on the Facebook wall
likely contributed to non-significant change in social support from friends. This
statement may not be accurate as participants may not consider other
participants as friends. Did the survey question differentiate between friends
though the Facebook group vs friends in their life?
13. Authors need to change the statement on line 495 as their study is not yet
published. Also, there may be a paper in press that focuses on using social
media to promote PA among African American women; therefore, first study
should be changed to few studies, limited number of studies…
Minor Essential Revisions
14. What was the average time between notification of group and orientation and
between end of 8 week intervention and follow-up accelerometer data collection?
15. Sentence starting on line 20 needs to be re-worded.
16. Paragraph starting online 136…subtitle states “weekly Facebook and Text
Message Materials” but there is no discussion of text message materials in the
section.
17. Author indicates the intervention materials were informed by the first author’s
previous research. Does this mean both the Facebook and text message
materials?
18. Line 372. PI needs to be changed to FI.
19. Line 445. Sentence starting with “We not though…” needs to be reworded.
20. Table 3. The n for total sample needs to be changed from 30 to 29.
Discretionary Revisions
21. Provide examples of comments provided by participants.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
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.