PONE-D-19-16607

Improving measles vaccine uptake rates in Nigeria: an RCT evaluating the impact of incentive sizes and reminder calls on vaccine uptake

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Stein,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

• I think this is an important RCT. However I have a couple of specific requests. First, please attend to the comments and directives from the statistical reviewer (reviewer 2). Second, I think your discussion is weak, and could be improved if you offered a bit more of an explanation for why you think your approach did not have much effect with respect to increasing measles vaccine uptake. I think you could summarise some of the differences between the north and south, as suggested by the reviewer. In addition, if there were other geographical barriers for example your study was conducted during the rainy season. I also wondered whether the member of the household with the mobile phone is the man. Other factors might include women not being able to take time away from work e.g. is there any difference between he north and south with respect to women's work, including for example harvesting etc. Also, having other young children to care for, making taking time out to travel difficult. Also are the distances required to travel to the clinic different in the North? Last, I would like to see a paragraph on 'next steps', outline your plan, on how to improve vaccine uptake, and how you will do some qualitative work, and link further studies to educating both mothers and fathers in the communities of the importance of infant vaccination.
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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sarah L Pett, MD, PhD, FRACP, FRCP

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

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4. 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 #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: This is an interesting study which has some flaws but these are acknowledged by the authors. It is unfortunate that there was no qualitative component to the study. I think there would be some benefit to the reader of having some background demographic data especially highlighting the differences between North and south Nigeria. this could show income, mobile phone coverage and perhaps religious differences which are commented upon as being part of the explanation for the findings of the study.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript entitled 'Improving measles vaccine uptake rates in Nigeria: an RCT evaluating the impact of incentive sizes and reminder calls on vaccine uptake'. This is quite an interesting study. The study was well described.

However, the manuscript requires some revision.

Comments

Page 8, proper citation for STATA including publisher name to be provided.

Sample size calculation to be provided or power of study based on study sample size to be discussed.

Page 6 and Page 3, there were no Table 1 and Table 2a as what stated in the text. Please ensure the sequence of the Tables in the text are in ascending order and systematically follow the sequence of the tables.

Page 9 Paragraph 1, Table 2a could be further improved by incorporation of the sample numbers according to the region.

Table 2b, Table 3, the individual symbol % for individual figures to be omitted as the symbol was indicated on top of the table.

Table 2, 3, 5 some of the SD figures are larger than the mean. Please double check if other measures of central tendency and measure of dispersion could be used.

Page 11 Paragraph 2, the word full or overall sample to be stated in Line 1 and Line 3. The decimal points for the P value in the text and table to be standardized. Likewise Page 15 and Page 16

Table 4b, in the table footnote, 0. or .0 presentation for the coefficient and 95% CI to be standardized throughout the manuscript.

Page 13, 14, 15 the word adjusted to be stated in the text in the beginning.

The correct way to display 95% CI in the text in relation to Table 4a, 4b and 5 need to be revisited as some figures in the table have negative sign for lower and upper limit. Some signs for the 95% CI in the text could misinterpreted as positive sign/figures.

The color in the tables to be omitted. The significant p value could be highlighted in bold.

The CONSORT flow diagram could be tweaked where additional information could be added to reflect the study.

More discussion could be added.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Improving measles vaccine uptake rates in Nigeria: an RCT evaluating the impact of incentive sizes and reminder calls on vaccine uptake

PONE-D-19-16607R1

Dear Dr. Stein

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,

Patricia Evelyn Fast, MD, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for these revisions, which strengthen the paper.

Please consider one additional suggestion by Reviewer number two, to use median and IQR for Table 3, based on skewing of the data.

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: No

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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 #1: (No Response)

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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The authors have put in some efforts to address the comments.

Minor comments

For Table 3, median ± IQR to be used for skewed data instead of mean ± sd

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No