PONE-D-20-13204

The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Quiroga Sánchez,

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 Sep 10 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,

Joel Msafiri Francis, MD, MS, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

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• The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript
• A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)
• A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)

3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the 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.

4. Your ethics statement must appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript.

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: No

**********

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: Recommendation: Minor Revisions

Thank you for the opportunity to review for PLoS One. Thank you to the authors for their hard work and interesting study. Overall, there might be a relevant and important paper here, however some sections are unclear and need refining if they are to sell the novelty of the paper fully. I will note that I am not an expert on social network analysis (I only have a basic quantitative understanding of the specific methodologies involved) and the paper should be considered by a relevant statistician before a decision is made.

Strengths

- There are few empirical social network analyses out there due to the difficulty in obtaining data suggesting a potential novel study design

- Potentially interesting analyses on the network structure and how varies by some basic sociodemographic issues

- Well written discussion

Areas for Improvement

- Line 39: ‘In this sense, different research’ doesn’t quite work with the rest of the statement, suggest revise

- Line 44: Drop use of ‘extremely’ as no need to overplay the importance of the issue

- Lines 94-94: Repeated use of (i) for different points is confusing to the reader and suggests overlap when there is not. Please revise.

- The introduction is not structured effectively and jumps about a lot. It would benefit from thinking about the flow of ideas and the content being discussed. It also doesn’t feel like there is much novelty here. I am sure there is, but it is not explained clearly in particular that the premise of the study appears to suggest that we already know a lot of this.

- Line 102: What is ‘DE’, please define in first use

- Line 149: ‘We analysed the la existence’ needs correcting

- Line 153: Unsure what is the point of the statistical test here as the numbers appear to be comparing whether there is a difference between risk and no risk in women. Although a ‘statistically insignificant’ effect is reported, there is a <1% difference here which suggests in reality it isn’t important. I would have expected a comparison of the metric between women and men here instead (i.e. were women more or less at risk compared to men) - this might be what you did but it isn’t clear that it is.

- There are many results to report meaning the section is rather brief. I think this is more an issue in how they are discussed and some of their novelties are not teased out. It might need greater clarity especially to help guide a lay reader which will be important to increase the awareness and reach of your paper

- No discussion of limitations of research in the discussion. What were the major weaknesses or opportunities for future research? How representative were your data? How might you improve on your study? What data could you have collected to make it stronger? We would normally expect some reflection over the strengths and weaknesses of a paper.

- Data and analytical code are not openly available. If possible (more for the former than the latter which should be fine), this should be made available to adhere to PLoS One guidance. This will also improve the impact of your paper.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to the manuscript entitled, The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments submitted to PLOS ONE (PONE-D-20-13204). The study examines alcohol use among a sample of adolescents to better understand the geographic contribution to alcohol consumption. The study also examines the influence of peer groups by assessing triadic relationships. The manuscript has significant grammatical errors and needs copyediting. The introduction is brief and needs additional discussion on the contribution of geographic area on alcohol availability and alcohol consumption. The methods section is most problematic; there are essential details that are missing that limit interpretation of the results. In its current form, the manuscript is not ready for publication. Specific comments are listed below.

Line 37, define risk limits.

Line 38 should be supported by additional citations. Similarly, line 47 should be supported by additional citations. The authors should review the literature on neighborhood environment (and rural/urban) and alcohol availability and consumption.

The language is too causal in some areas “it is important that nowadays”

Line 57 should be rewritten

Line 89 should be rewritten

The last paragraph is vague. The authors should be specific when discussing the aims (e.g. including the outcome measure).

Are state schools similar to public schools in the US? How was rural and urban defined? Differences in alcohol availability?

Were adolescents under 18 able to consent? Was there parental consent?

What does “The recruitment was incidental” mean?

Response rate? Compensation for completing the assessment?

“ad-hoc” ones is too casual. This sentence needs a citation. Which validated instruments were used?

How many questions were included? How was the outcome measure defined?

How were schools and areas selected? The year(s) of data collection should be included.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria?

The data analysis section should be rewritten. Alpha should be less than 0.05, not less than or equal to. Any control variables? What statistical test was used? Any missing data? Power analysis?

There are areas in the results that are not English “la existence” and “consumption de alcohol.”

Line 160 belongs in the methods

Table 4 does not stand alone and is difficult to interpret.

The results cannot be fully evaluated without the missing information in the methods section.

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6. 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-13204.docx

PONE-D-20-13204R1

The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Quiroga Sánchez,

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 Oct 16 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,

Joel Msafiri Francis, MD, MS, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please kindly address the additional reviewer comments carefully.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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

**********

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: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: No

**********

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: All changes made and the paper is stronger for it. Thank you for your hard work, and well done. Accept.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised manuscript entitled The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments submitted to PLOS One (PONE-D-20-13204R1). The manuscript has improved but there remains significant problems, mainly related to the language and grammar. Specific comments are below.

The entire abstract needs copyediting. Adolescence is confused with adolescents. Analyse should be analyze. The methodology section should be expanded. Results from the regression models should be added to the abstract.

Similarly, the introduction needs significant copyediting.

The sample population and recruitment should start the methods section. Was assent obtained for minors? What does the initial population refer to (students that expressed interest)? What geographic unit/size for classifying urban/rural, mentioning 50,000 population alone is insufficient. Nuclei? A better description of access between rural and urban areas would be appreciated. The target population described at the end of the first paragraph on page 6 should be moved to the beginning of the methods section and this is unclear. The results of the power analysis should be mentioned in the text. The analyses should be reviewed by a statistician. The entire methods section needs copyediting.

The study overall is not as strong as it could be. The sample size is relatively small and the analyses are not well described.

**********

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.

PONE-D-20-13204R2

The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Quiroga Sánchez,

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 Nov 19 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,

Joel Msafiri Francis, MD, MS, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript will benefit from copy editing. It would be helpful to seek help from the native English speaker.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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: I had not requested any further comments so all good on my side and wishing you the best of luck with your paper.

Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed the comments. Grammar and readability continues to be a problem. Methodology/analyses appropriate.

**********

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.

The consumption of alcohol by adolescent schoolchildren: Differences in the triadic relationship pattern between rural and urban environments.

PONE-D-20-13204R3

Dear Dr. Quiroga Sánchez,

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.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

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,

Joel Msafiri Francis, MD, MS, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: