PONE-D-19-19653

Comparability of modern contraceptive use estimates between a face-to-face survey and a cellphone survey among women in Burkina Faso

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr. Greenleaf,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we have decided that your manuscript does not meet our criteria for publication and must therefore be rejected.

Specifically: there is lack of consistent information, at some places the statements are not clearly presented. The findings and the interpretation of data dont match and variables used in the research are not clearly defined.

I am sorry that we cannot be more positive on this occasion, but hope that you appreciate the reasons for this decision.

Yours sincerely,

Russell Kabir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

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

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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3. 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: There are few comments as well such as:

1- What are the information in first column? Are they age categories?

2- Page 15, line 317, “significance using an alpha of 0.05” should be written “less than 0.05”.

3- Page 20, line 347, please include SD or SE when you report the mean.

4- Table 4, please clarify different marital status as married and non-married.

5- Table 5 can be deleted as its information has been explained in text completely.

6- Table 6, some figured are bold which probably shows the significance but p-value is not reported.

7- Discussion should show the application of the study results.

Reviewer #2: The authors present an important issue relevant for public health and epidemiological data collection. In the present article, the main aim was to assess survey errors when comparing computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI) to FTF surveys for modern contraceptive use in Burkina Faso. As the first of its kind, this paper is essential given the recent increase in cell phone ownership in low to middle income countries (LMIC). I commend their brilliant presentation and recommend this article to be considered for publication.

My only comment relating to this article is given below:

The authors clearly pointed out that the difference in contraceptive prevalence rates could not be fully explained owing in part to the small number of demographic variables available in the RDD survey. Other key indicators that influence the use of modern contraceptives in LMIC settings include the health service environment, physical infrastructure, and prevailing cultural beliefs surrounding health care seeking. Were any of these assessed as part of the study? It will be interesting to see how any of these other indicators contribute to the difference in prevalence rates between the two surveys.

Reviewer #3: I do not think the manuscript is written in a scientific manner and there is a lack of consistency across the manuscript. The comparison of both data and their interpretations are difficult to understand. Moreover, this is not a suitable manuscript for Plos One readers.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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For journal use only: PONEDEC3

Comparability of modern contraceptive use estimates between a face-to-face survey and a cellphone survey among women in Burkina Faso

PONE-D-19-19653R1

Dear Dr.  Abigail Greenleaf,  

After reviewing your manuscript, your appeal and all reviewer comments, 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.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Kenneth Ngure, PhD MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Tanya Doherty PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the RDD study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information.

2. Please note that in order to use the direct billing option the corresponding author must be affiliated with the chosen institute. Please either amend your manuscript or remove this option (via Edit Submission).

3. Please amend your list of authors on the manuscript to ensure that each author is linked to an affiliation. Authors’ affiliations should reflect the institution where the work was done (if authors moved subsequently, you can also list the new affiliation stating “current affiliation:….” as necessary).

4. Thank you for including your ethics statement on the online submission form:

"The PMA2020 FTF survey has exempt status (IRB #00000287, exempt as “public health practice”, defined by DHHS regulations 45 CFR 46.102), as determined by John Hopkins’ IRB. Approval was granted in July 2014 by the Comité d’éthique pour la recherche en santé (IRB #2014-7-81). Consent was obtained orally. For the phone survey, ethical approval was granted by the IRB at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (IRB No. 00007961). The ISSP team submitted a protocol to their ethical committee for the RDD survey (IRB No. 2018-3-036).".

* To help ensure that the wording of your manuscript is suitable for publication, would you please also add this statement at the beginning of the Methods section of your manuscript file.