PONE-D-20-15042

Economic Violence against Women: A case in Turkey

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alkan,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

M Niaz Asadullah

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Both referees read the paper with interest but share the view that substantive changes are necessary before the paper can be considered for publication. I have also gone through the paper and share the referee recommendations. Referee 2 has emphasized on the need to engage better with the literature and be more critical in discussing the key concepts & measures (e.g. women’s exposure to economic IPV) and provided a detailed revision guideline. Other recommendations include a thorough language check to correct grammatical mistakes.

I hope all of these addressed during the revision stage. I also have a few other points for the authors to consider.

1. In the discussion section (2nd last para), the authors say: "Women's empowerment, and to consider them as individuals existing in society are important steps to prevent violence. Unless a society that understands that women can have economic potential and take part in successful jobs is formed, violence against women should not be expected to end completely." Pls avoid such unsubstantiated claims and viewpoints. There's already a literature on the link between empowerment and violence. Kindly cite relevant studies in support of your claim.

2. tables 3-4: pls report sample size. also no need to report confidence intervals

3. the paper would also benefit from a section on study background and context so that readers unfamiliar with Turkey has an introduction to norms of violence , gender roles and power balance within marriage in Turkey.

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

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: 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: No

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: The subject of manuscripts appears interesting, but some important revisions for clarity are needed before publication decision.

The hypothesis of the research are not clear. The author(s) needs to explain what are the main research questions of this paper. This paper needs a comprehensive literature review on the issue of conceptualization of economic violence. The hypothesis address this issue and the main contribution to literature should be explained.

It is sufficient to present ratios for descriptive statistics. It is not clear why the author(s) apply Chi-square tests such as the Chi-square test between Survey year and “Exposure to Economic Violence”.

The paper use “The binary logistic regression” methodology. It present “odd ratios”. But, it could be better if the author(s) calculates “marginal effects” and add them to the manuscript.

The manuscript includes unnecessary explanations about Tables. For example Table 3 includes odds ratios and confidence intervals. However, the following paragraphs repeat all these statistics. It will be better to explain the summary of the results and their connection with the hypothesis. The dependent variable is created with respect to answers of the women about their husband/partner’s behavior. So, it seems that the research includes women who live with their husbands/partners. Some of the explanations lose its meaning such as “The women who had a relationship and were married had a higher odds ratio of exposure to economic violence compared to women who had no existing relationship.” On the other hand, the data source of the research is limited. The subject in this research needs to collect data using interviews with women. For example Sen, S. and Bolsoy, N (2017) collect data using questionnaires and “Scale of Domestic Violence against Women”.

There are some contradictions in the manuscript. For example, in the abstract, the explanation about education level as follow: “Women who graduated from elementary school, secondary school, and high school had a higher odds ratio of exposure to economic violence compared to those who have never gone to school.” P.19 “Women who graduated from elementary school, secondary and high school had higher possibility of exposure to economic violence by 18.34%, 25.14% and 19.4%, respectively, compared to women who have never finished school.” However P.21 there is the following explanation: “In the study, it was determined that the educational status of women had an effect on exposure to economic violence. In the study, it was concluded that the possibility of exposure to economic violence decreased as the educational level increased.”

The author(s) claims that the paper can be a significant guide in determining the priority areas for the solution of economic violence. However, the connections between the results of research and priority area explanations in the conclusion are weak. It needs to explain relations between the results and priority area explanations.

The authors also needs to read the text carefully and should correct grammatical mistakes. It needs to proof reading before to submitting.

Reviewer #2: Comments on

This study examined the correlates of women’s exposure to economic coercion in Turkey using the micro data set of the National Research on Domestic Violence against Women in Turkey. The topic of women’s exposure to economic coercion is salient and understudied, so this manuscript makes an important empirical contribution that is worthy of publication and that will be of interest to researchers of violence against women and women’s health. Below are suggestions that the authors might consider to improve the contributions that this manuscript makes.

Introduction/Background

The literature review should be strengthened considerably by including some of the seminal conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. For example, the authors may consider citing the following studies (there are many others, so these are illustrative):

Conceptualization and reviews of economic coercion/IPV. Here, the authors should offer a clear definition of economic IPV/coercion. What are the dimensions of economic IPV, as discussed in the literature? Providing a clear definition will allow the authors to critique how well economic IPV is measured in their data source (see comment about the discussion).

1. Dutton, M. A., & Goodman, L. A. (2005). Coercion in intimate partner violence: Toward a new conceptualization. Sex roles, 52(11-12), 743-756.

2. Postmus, J. L., Plummer, S. B., McMahon, S., Murshid, N. S., & Kim, M. S. (2012). Understanding economic abuse in the lives of survivors. Journal of interpersonal violence, 27(3), 411-430.

3. Postmus, J. L., Hoge, G. L., Breckenridge, J., Sharp-Jeffs, N., & Chung, D. (2020). Economic abuse as an invisible form of domestic violence: A multicountry review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 21(2), 261-283.

4. Stylianou, A. M. (2018). Economic abuse within intimate partner violence: A review of the literature. Violence and Victims, 33(1), 3-22.

Measurement of economic coercion/IPV:

5. Postmus, J. L., Plummer, S. B., & Stylianou, A. M. (2016). Measuring economic abuse in the lives of survivors: Revising the Scale of Economic Abuse. Violence against women, 22(6), 692-703.

6. Adams, A. E., Beeble, M. L., & Gregory, K. A. (2015). Evidence of the construct validity of the Scale of Economic Abuse. Violence and victims, 30(3), 363-376.

7. Adams, A. E., Greeson, M. R., Littwin, A. K., & Javorka, M. (2019). The Revised Scale of Economic Abuse (SEA2): Development and initial psychometric testing of an updated measure of economic abuse in intimate relationships. Psychology of Violence.

8. Schrag, R. J. V., & Ravi, K. (2020). Measurement of economic abuse among women not seeking social or support services and dwelling in the community. Violence and victims, 35(1), 3-19.

Correlates of economic IPV and co-occurrence with other forms of IPV

9. Yount, K. M., Krause, K. H., & VanderEnde, K. E. (2016). Economic coercion and partner violence against wives in Vietnam: a unified framework?. Journal of interpersonal violence, 31(20), 3307-3331.

Health effects of economic IPV against women:

10. Khan, Z., Cheong, Y. F., Miedema, S., Naved, R. T., & Yount, K. (2020). Women's Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence, Economic Coercion, and Depressive Symptoms in Bangladesh. Economic Coercion, and Depressive Symptoms in Bangladesh (January 31, 2020).

11. Adams, A. E., & Beeble, M. L. (2019). Intimate partner violence and psychological well-being: Examining the effect of economic abuse on women’s quality of life. Psychology of violence, 9(5), 517.

12. Davila, A. L., Johnson, L., & Postmus, J. L. (2017). Examining the relationship between economic abuse and mental health among Latina intimate partner violence survivors in the United States. Journal of interpersonal violence, 0886260517731311.

13. Stylianou, A. M. (2018). Economic abuse experiences and depressive symptoms among victims of intimate partner violence. Journal of family violence, 33(6), 381-392.

14. Voth Schrag, R. J., Robinson, S. R., & Ravi, K. (2019). Understanding pathways within intimate partner violence: Economic abuse, economic hardship, and mental health. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 28(2), 222-242.

Data/Methods

The authors should provide more detail on the data source. What were the inclusion criteria? Was this a cross-sectional study? What was the sampling strategy? What was the response rate?

The authors also should provide a critical discussion of the three questions on economic IPV? How well do they align with definitions of economic coercion/IPV? What aspects of economic coercion/IPV are captured? What are missed? What was the time frame for which participants were asked to report on experiences of economic IPV—lifetime? Prior year? Why did the authors select a binary outcome instead of a count outcome (number of types of economic coercion experienced in the given time frame?)

The authors say that they relied on the literature for decisions about selections for the correlates of IPV, but do not cite any literature in the discussion of correlates. I refer the authors here to the article by Yount et al. in Vietnam as a relevant reference in this section.

Analytically, I wonder about the extent to which other forms of violence “predict” economic coercion, or whether these are co-occurring and reciprocally influential behaviors in an abusive relationship. The temporal ordering of the variables is critical, but is not well described. I encourage the authors to be more transparent about the timeframe for which different forms of violence are measured, and the temporal ordering of economic coercion with other forms of IPV used as predictors.

Findings/Discussion

The authors should do a better job of critiquing the measure of women’s exposure to economic IPV. What are the implications of poor measurement for inferences from the analysis? What recommendations come out of the limitations of the measure of economic IPV used in the study?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: Review_Economic Violence against Women A case in Turkey.docx

Economic Violence against Women: A case in Turkey

PONE-D-20-15042R1

Dear Dr. Alkan,

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,

Sisi Zhang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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 #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: I am reviewing authors’ edits to the manuscript and their responses to the previous reviewer #1’s comments. I am happy to see that the authors have addressed all the comments that reviewer #1 has raised and the manuscript is significantly improved. Specifically, the manuscript adds a comprehensive literature review, modifies discussions on “marginal effects” and Pearson chi-square tests, and explains tables better. The contradictory results are corrected, and the discussion section was reorganized.

Reviewer #4: The revised manuscript has addressed all comments raised by previous reviewers. I recommend accepting the paper.

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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 #4: No

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Referee report.docx