PONE-D-20-17482

What does the American public know about ‘child marriage’?

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lawson,

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.

Overall, the reviewers had very positive comments about this manuscript. They had some small concerns to be addressed....

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Mellissa H Withers, PhD, MHS

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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: 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?

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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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: I fully enjoyed this ms, particularly as I live in a culturally mixed community where there are many marriages among people just under 18 years of age. These couples form tight bonds and begin families early. They are far from what I consider "child" marriages.

Despite this, there are some editorial issues that detract from the ms. Specifically:

1) Sentences should not begin with Arabic numerals. See any style manager such as https://style.mla.org/percentage-at-start-of-sentence/. Thus, please rewrite sentences beginning on lines 156, 158, 181, 194, and 202. I am uncertain that I caught all of them, but be sure to address this issue before resubmission.

2) Table titles should appear above the tables, not within them. They also need to be complete so that the table can be understood if presented on its own. Again, see any style manager such as APA which states: Each table and figure must be intelligible without reference to the text, so be sure to include an explanation of every abbreviation (except the standard statistical symbols and abbreviations). Thus, please remove the table titles from within the tables and restate them so they comport with table title requirements. For example, Table 1 - Participant characteristics for what? Table 2 - Participant responses to what? Check the table titles in several journals to see what I mean.

Table 1 Column 2 is mislabeled and confusing to the reader. Change n (%) and insert a row above Political Leanings and insert median (IQR).

Table 2 Column 2 is also confusing. Again, insert rows to indicate which are n (%) and which are median (IQR) or perhaps relabel the column Responses and indicate the format in the question such as:

Q1. What is the legal threshold for 'child marriage; as defined by the UN? [median(IQR)]

What is the format for Q9? It is listed as 30 (17. 44). Should this be a comma or closed space?

3) Lines 283 and 284 are redundant. Please remove the in-line citations.

4) Line 293 uses US rather than USA. Please be consistent. When referring to the proper noun use USA and reserve US for the adjective here and throughout the ms.

5) Line 305 should be e.g.

6) Line 402 - align your citation

References:

These are not standardized nor well proofed. All journal titles should be caps. All article titles should be sentence case. For example:

356 - remove space before :

361 - No journal listed

366 - Cap journal title

370 - remove space before .

375 - What does the 9. mean?

387 - Article not in sentence case

388 - Journal should not be in ital

389 - Why is this ital?

I stopped here. Please standardize and proof ALL your references.

Supplementary Tables

Should be (s.d.) throughout, not (s.d)

Also - somewhere I saw a8 rather than 18, but I cannot find it again.

Good luck with your resubmission!

Reviewer #2: This manuscript uses survey data to show how Americans profoundly misunderstand exactly what “child marriage” entails, and how common it is around the world. The results are interesting and important, and the manuscript will make a solid contribution after mostly cosmetic revisions.

Title: There’s no good reason child marriage should be in quotes. The scholarly proclivity for precision—these marriages usually involve teenagers, not children—is less important than just using commonly understood English language. The abstract indeed makes clear just what child marriage means in the world. Moreover, the quotes are repeated inconsistently throughout the text and the figures/tables: sometimes it’s child marriage, sometimes it’s “child marriage.”

p. 3, ln. 52. Negative news may garner interest, donations, and support for foreign aid. Or not. I don’t know the answer, so I don’t think the authors should presume to know it either.

p. 6, ln. 121. The last time I checked, minors could marry in some states under two other conditions, pregnancy and with judicial approval.

p. 7, ln. 135. Is it normal practice to only use Turkers with 85%+ approval ratings? How might this affect the results? Are there demographic attributes that distinguish highly rated Turkers? Similarly, did non-compliant Turkers give different answers on the child marriage questions (lns. 142-146)? Both of these seem like conventional concerns about selection bias that should be probed with the data at hand. I’m not asking for a properly identified instrumental variable model here, but just some bivariate statistics.

p. 7, ln. 135. I realize that a free market is a free market, but I find it troubling that the authors chose to compensate survey respondents at what translates to a wage of $3 an hour. If $325 is all they could afford, fine. Otherwise I’d urge them to pay their respondents a more ethical wage next time. Obviously this has no bearing on whether the manuscript should be published, but I’m perfectly OK with using my status as a reviewer to encourage the authors to do better in the future

p. 8, lns. 158, 160, 161, passim. Round off percentages to whole numbers. Decimals generally imply better accuracy in measurement than is generally possible. They also convey no useful information, but provide eye clutter. Exceptions to this rule should only be made when the decimals represent meaningful increments. Examples: the unemployment rate, or regression coefficients.

p. 8, lns. 162-164. Political leanings of 47 on a 0-100 scale are more meaningfully described as centrist than as “slightly left of center.”

Table 1 is far more bewildering than a table of summary statistics needs to be. Why in the world are IQRs presented? Just present means or medians for continuous variables and percentages for categorical variables in a format that doesn’t require at me to stare at the table for 20 seconds to figure out, say, what percent of the sample has a high school diploma.

p. 9, lns. 177-178. The option to answer any question in years??? How else are people going to answer? When was the last time you told anyone your age in months? This is nonsensical.

p. 9, lns. 179-182. If the correct answer is 18 and the median response is 17, then, yes, 50 percent of people provided answers of under 18. That is how medians work. In case it’s not apparent, my point is that there’s something about how the authors are presenting these results that defies logical exposition.

For Figure 2.A, there’s only a single threshold, not multiple thresholds. What’s more, tables and figures should always stand on their own: I should be able to look at one and make sense of it without consulting the text (and vice versa). That isn’t the case here, especially with Figures 2.C and 2.D. Is this the percentage of respondents who think each listed percentage in the figure is marrying before age 18? That’s a confusing question, because it’s not clear what the figures are representing.

p. 11, ln. 208. If people are overestimating both in the U.S. and in Africa and Asia, “but” is not the right conjunction.

p. 11, ln. 215. Older X unemployed X overestimating is three variables, so this isn’t bivariate analysis.

p. 12, lns. 226-228. The authors might observe that Americans are under-informed about just about everything: there are ample studies showing public ignorance across a wide range of topics.

p. 13. The authors are tying themselves in knots here to avoid saying the obvious: there are places on earth where nobody is too offended when two seventeen-year-olds get married. Similarly, most Americans might question the prudence and perhaps the decorum of an 18 year old American marrying a seventeen-year-old, but most people would probably hesitate to call it a “forced” marriage.

p. 15. In writing of hypocrisy, the authors are conflating individual belief and practice with the legal regime in the states they reside.

p. 15, ln. 296. The article cited [43] doesn’t establish that the right of pregnant teens to marry is the reason the laws haven’t changed; it’s just one possible reason.

p. 15, ln. 298. Say “respondent,” not “participant.” The latter is vague.

p. 16, lns. 322-323. The author’s faux anti-colonialist posturing here is fatuous. The authors are Americans writing for a predominantly Western audience. Foreign aid is coming from the West. Please omit this statement about whose understanding should be prioritized.

Reviewer #3: This manuscript addresses an important issue and is timely. However, at times, it verges on advocacy rather than scientific reporting. The authors might want to re-read the discussion with this in mind.

There is a missing word in line 248 "such, a pregnant 17-year-old is labelled a ‘teen’, but if married, and especially if she from a low." Please insert "is"after 'she."

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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What does the American public know about child marriage?

PONE-D-20-17482R1

Dear Dr. Lawson,

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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Kind regards,

Mellissa H Withers, PhD, MHS

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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: Yes

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The science is sound, so this should be published. Moreover, the authors have responded to my proposed revisions intended to bring greater clarity to the prose.

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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