Title: Contraceptive experience and factors associated with desire for postpartum family
planning among pregnant women of the Nkongsamba Health District, Littoral Region,
Cameroon
Version: 1 Date: 06 Sep 2024
Reviewer's report:
PEER REVIEWER ASSESSMENTS:
OBJECTIVE - Full research articles: is there a clear objective that addresses a testable research
question(s) (brief or other article types: is there a clear objective)?
Yes - there is a clear objective
DESIGN - Is the current approach (including controls and analysis protocols) appropriate for
the objective?
No - there are minor issues
EXECUTION - Are the experiments and analyses performed with technical rigor to allow
confidence in the results?
No - there are minor issues
STATISTICS - Is the use of statistics in the manuscript appropriate?
No - there are issues with the statistics in the study
INTERPRETATION - Is the current interpretation/discussion of the results reasonable and not
overstated?
No - there are minor issues
OVERALL MANUSCRIPT POTENTIAL - Is the current version of this work technically
sound? If not, can revisions be made to make the work technically sound?
Probably - with minor revisions
PEER REVIEWER COMMENTS:
GENERAL COMMENTS: The issues of and conversations family planning, child spacing and
child limiting in LMICs, especially sub Saharan Africa is hushed, avoided or uncomfortable.
My overall impression of the study is that it addresses an important issue with population,
maternal and reproductive health, which is Post Partum family planning, and so the authors have
done well in this regard.
The paper meets best practice however, certain adjustments need to be made.
REQUESTED REVISIONS:
The title should be adjusted to "Contraceptive Experience and factors associated with postpartum
family planning choices/options/ methods among pregnant women of the Nkongsamba Health
District, .........(Region i.e North West or South East) Cameroon"
The word experience shows an element of exposure, this piques the interest of the readers. The
full paper then goes on to highlight if the experience is - past, present or future.
Mentioning the district, does not help the reader visualize in their minds, where in Cameroon the
study area is located, adding the region to the title gives an idea of what part of the country it's in.
The reference in the background  "In 2013, it was estimated that up to 40% of pregnancies among
Cameroonian women were unintended [2].", should be changed to a more recent reference, as
there are more recent studies that can give current data.
There are no tables that show the bivariate done, or is the bivariate analysis, what the authors
have refered to as " simple logistic regression"?.
Bivariate analysis is different from a Simple logistic regression so, we need to see the cross
tabs done before multivariable analysis, so  readers can appreciate the relationship between
independent and dependent variables, which may not be appreciated by reading text/prose alone.
The way the results i.e Figures and Tables were referenced, can be done better. The results
should be written clearly, then Figure or Table are written in brackets at the end of the Sentence.
"Contraceptive past behaviour (experience) before conception and desire for postpartum
contraception in this study shows that the self-reported prevalence of use of modern
contraception in the past in the study population was 48.87 [95%CI: 45.86-51.88] %. However,
a major fraction had adopted only the use of barrier methods in the past ( Figure 1)."
The results section is quite busy and not very clear. Aside the findings written in prose. The
authors should connect the writing to the tables in the body of the write up in the results section.
Also the write up in the results section, should be sectioned into more paragraphs, with each
block sharing a particular story, message or finding(s), so that the section is interesting, engaging
and easy to follow.
After the results have been highlighted and connected to the tables, There should be a
paragraph that summarizes the important positive findings and important negative findings, after
explaining how confounders were controlled for.
Also, the decimal points should be consistent, some figure have no decimal points, some none,
some one, some two. The authors should maintain consistency with their presentation of results.
Based on the findings from this study, the discussion section is not robust enough, ND requires
expansiating the possible causes of the findings from a public health perspective and the
implications for population, reproductive and maternal health, before comparing and contrasting
with other settings.
The conclusions should include recommendations, directed to particular stakeholders, agencies
or institutions not just a blanket statement, that is not particularly targeted stakeholders or policy
makers.