PONE-D-19-18946

Disaggregated Level Child Morbidity in Bangladesh: An Application of Small Area Estimation Method

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: p8, I would avoid using language that refers to the outcomes as "event" as it implies these are incident rates, these are from a survey so they are prevalences, and the event language should not be used. I would suggest using the term "outcome"

What software was used to do the analysis?

Where are the sub-district level variables derived from? the DHS itself? specify source and if you derived them, how this was done

In appendix table 1, instead of pliterate and other variable names from the computer software, spell these out (e.g. % literate), same with the sub-district level variable names

I don't think the figure 1 is necessary

I think the figures in figure 3 on the right would be better presented as points,vs the line, also i'm not sure from the figure what the solid black line represents

Figure 4, remove the blue lines between districts, use a thin black line instead. Also the islands on the ocean side of the country are basically illegible because there are so many, would simplified shapefile be a better choice for this presentation?

Have the district and sub-district maps have the same scales so the colors are comparable between the two levels.

I would recommend a formally defined Discussion and Conclusion section of the manuscript

Grammatical notes

p5. change area level method to area level methods

p5. change due to zero observation to due to zero observations

p5. change however not possible to estimate to however it is not possible to estimate

p7. change source of drinking water, sanitation to source of drinking water, and household sanitation

p8, multilevel is misspelled as multilvel

p8. problematic is misspelled as problemtic

p8 change discussed in model development section to discussed in the model development section

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting paper about the application of a small area estimation (SEA) method to child morbidity in Bangladesh. The paper is useful as it extends a technique used by the World Bank for continuous variable (consumption per capita and nutrition Z-score) to dichotomous variables on ARI and diarrhea. The authors apply the method to 2011 data from the BDHS and Bangladesh census.

A few comments:

- It will be good to present more information on applications of SEA to other countries, even if using continuous variable. Particular emphasis could be discussing any validation studies or comparisons of the small area estimates obtained with SEA with estimates obtained from other sources for the small areas or with estimates that came from a census (or sample from a census).

- The authors make a good argumentation on the fitness of the model, however, the figures were barely readable. For a method based largely on figures, it was not good.

- In page 15, the authors discuss Table 3. The text says “Table 3 indicates that the mean …” but the estimates presented are from the “Median” column in Table 3.

- This application had the benefit of having the DHS and the census sample from the year. It will be good for the authors to elaborate on the application of SEA in other situations of data availability that are more prevalent in developing countries, such as, a number of years of separation between the DHS and a census (an its sample), or having a limited number of common variables in the two data sources.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review_SEA_Model_Child_Morbidity_Nov2019.docx

Disaggregated Level Child Morbidity in Bangladesh: An Application of Small Area Estimation Method

PONE-D-19-18946R1

Dear Dr. Kawsar,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: Review Comments to the Author:

NO ADDITIONAL COMMENTS.

I feel that the authors have addressed my concerns and the manuscript acceptable for publication.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: GUSTAVO ANGELES