PONE-D-20-12333

Correlates of bullying victimization among school adolescents in Nepal: Findings from 2015 Global School-Based Student Health Survey Nepal

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Neupane,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pranil Man Singh Pradhan

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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 a well written article highlighting a very important area of school health on bullying. However, there are certain aspects that could be improved in the revision to reach a publishable quality.

Major comments:

Methods:

The authors have mentioned that they have used a nationally representative data. However, no information is provided on the regions from which the schools were selected. Were the selected schools government or private schools, were these schools selected across the country or confined to a certain area alone?

What were the characteristics of the schools? For a country like Nepal, schools' characteristics vary widely between regions as well as between sectors. The problems faced by students from one of the most expensive school in Kathmandu isn't comparable to the students who need to walk for hours to reach the school in some remote parts of the country. Thus, more information on the schools are necessary.

The authors did acknowledge in the limitations section that certain information about schools are missing. In that case, the authors should provide an elaborate explanation on how it is still a nationally representative data despite the lack of information in the methods section. Or provide more details about the schools.

The method section has elaborated about the school survey as a primary data collection study. However, as this is a study based on secondary data analysis, it would be important for the authors to also elaborate the methods on how the data was retrieved? Were all the data from the survey analysed? Was the sample size calculated for this secondary study? Were there any inclusion or exclusion criteria for selecting the data for this secondary analysis study? In short, please focus on the methods used for this part of the study rather than on the already published survey.

Results:

-It would have been better if Table 1. was about the general characteristics instead of the variables. The table on variables could have been added as a supplementary file.

-In Table 1. I see all the variables are dichotomized but for sensitive issues such as mental health (anxiety and loneliness), e.g. being anxious all the times, sometimes or most of the time have different implications. It looses information on the severity if always, sometimes and most of the time are grouped into one category. So either it should be grouped as ''ever'' and ''never''. Or it would have been better if the authors created dummy variables for each severity such as for anxiety- sometimes=1, rest =0, then always=1, rest=0, and so on to fit in each severity in the analysis. If its not possible, please acknowledge it as a limitation that dichotomizing the variables could have lead to potential loss of information and it doesn't reflect the severity.

-In the multivariable analyses, why weren't the demographic characteristics such as age and sex adjusted? They are important confounders and it is important to control them in multivariable analysis given that the sex had already shown some significant association with bullying.

-Ideally, if possible the schools or clusters of schools too should have been controlled in the analysis. As there are many schools, it is understandable that all schools cannot be controlled. Instead they could be grouped into similar schools such as government vs private schools or schools by region and controlled accordingly because schools are important confounders affecting the results for the reasons mentioned above. If it is impossible for this study to control school please provide an explanation.

Minor comments

-Line 38: Please spell out DALYS when it appears for the first time in the manuscript

-Line 40: Please spell out SDI

I would recommend the authors to re-analyse the data addressing the comments above or provide justification.

Reviewer #2: The overall manuscript seems technically sound. The keywords are missing in the abstract which should have been mentioned. The manuscript has been prepared in an intelligible fashion and standard English has been used. But framing of sentences can be made more concise in overall manuscript so that the article is more interesting for readers. The statistical analysis has been performed appropriately and vigorously. Operational definitions for overweight and underweight not mentioned under variable description. Recommendations can be made more specific towards associated factors and variables.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

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PONE-D-20-12333R1

Correlates of bullying victimization among school adolescents in Nepal: Findings from 2015 Global School-Based Student Health Survey Nepal

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Neupane,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 31 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pranil Man Singh Pradhan

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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: Yes

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 #1: The authors have addressed most of the earlier comments adequately.

However, it would be better if the authors could also include some of the responses to the comments as part of the manuscript in the limitations section. Such as the authors mentioned that "According to the researchers involved in the

study, schools from both government and private schools were included in the survey

but GSHS report hasn’t mentioned about it."

This statements could be included (not entirely but briefly and rephrased) in the limitation section.

The authors have discussed the key findings elaborately with reference to global literature on bullying. However, it would be insightful if the authors could also elaborate a little on potential solutions to address bullying in schools for a country like Nepal. The authors concluded that "the findings of this study provide valuable insights for planning an effective approach in preventing bullying at schools". It would be insightful to understand what these "effective approaches" could be. A paragraph focusing on recommendations could help this paper provide more depth given that the paper uses a nationally representative data.

The manuscript needs proofreading.

Lines 39-42- The sentence is too long and difficult to follow. It can be broken down into two different sentences. Also "in" is missing before 2017 (line 41).

There are prepositions missing in some other parts of the manuscript as well.

Reviewer #2: The suggested revisions has been addressed. As the research is an analysis of a secondary data the limitations of selection of study population and sample still remains. Lack of informations about variations of schools also cannot be described more. But the research has been able to highlight a sensitive issue concerning mental health issues among school going adolescents of developing country like Nepal. Hence, the research should be encouraged to disseminate its findings in order to contribute to further research and interventions by concerned authorities.

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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

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Correlates of bullying victimization among school adolescents in Nepal: Findings from 2015 Global School-Based Student Health Survey Nepal

PONE-D-20-12333R2

Dear Dr. Neupane,

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

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Dr. Pranil Man Singh Pradhan

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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