COVID-19 knowledge, attitude and frequent hand hygiene practices among taxi drivers and associated factors in urban areas of Ethiopia

Tarikuwa Natnael; Metadel Adane; Yeshiwork Alemnew; Atsedemariam Andualem; Faris Hailu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253452

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 21, 2020
10 May 2021 Decision Letter - Prasenjit Mitra, Editor PONE-D-20-38254 Knowledge, Attitude and Hand Hygiene Practices towards COVID-19 among Taxi Drivers in Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Adane, 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 Jun 24 2021 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Prasenjit Mitra, MD, MRSB, MIScT, FLS, FACSc, FAACC Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. Whilst you may use any professional scientific editing service of your choice, PLOS has partnered with both American Journal Experts (AJE) and Editage to provide discounted services to PLOS authors. Both organizations have experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. To take advantage of our partnership with AJE, visit the AJE website (http://learn.aje.com/plos/) for a 15% discount off AJE services. To take advantage of our partnership with Editage, visit the Editage website (www.editage.com) and enter referral code PLOSEDIT for a 15% discount off Editage services. If the PLOS editorial team finds any language issues in text that either AJE or Editage has edited, the service provider will re-edit the text for free. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: 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, or include a citation if it has been published previously. 4. Please clearly describe the steps undertaken during pretesting and validation of the questionnaire. 5. In the methods, please clarify and define the terms "permanent" versus "temporary" taxi drivers. 6. Please clearly describe your rational for selecting the independent variables used in your statistical models. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: Abstract In line 32-40, the scoring of the key dependent variables could be removed from this section since it has been fully explained in the methods section. Line 32, the statistical software used to analyse the data is suppose to be SPSS not SSPSS. The authors should correct this typo. Background In line 95, the authors stated Communicable disease control but am not sure if that is the correct reference. The authors should cross-check it with that of Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Methods In line 149, the authors should carefully cite and reference the sample size formula used unless proven that its their own formula. In line 157-168, the authors should provide a reliability score/Cronbach's score of the questionnaire used since it was a newly developed questionnaire developed by the researchers themselves and has not being validated. ****** 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 [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253452.r001
Revision 1
10 May 2021 Author Response Date: May 10, 2021 Manuscript ID: PONE-D-20-38254 Knowledge, Attitude and Hand Hygiene Practices towards COVID-19 among Taxi Drivers in Urbans of Ethiopia Corresponding authors: Metadel Adane (PhD) Dear Dr Prasenjit Mitra, MD, MRSB, MIScT, FLS, FACSc, FAACC Academic Editor PLOS ONE Thank you all for your letter dated May 10 2021 with a decision of minor revision required. We were pleased to know that our manuscript was considered potentially acceptable for publication in PLoS ONE, subject to adequate revision as requested by the reviewers, academic editor and the journal office in-house editors. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the rebuttal letter; the marked up copy of the revised manuscript highlighting the changes made in the original submitted version and the clean copy of the revised manuscript. We have revised the manuscript by modifying the abstract, methods, results and other sections, based on the comments made by the reviewers and using the journal guidelines. Accordingly, we have marked in red color all the changes made during the revision process. Appended to this letter is our point-by-point response (rebuttal letter) to the comments made by the reviewers. We agree with almost all the comments/questions raised by the reviewers. We would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to the reviewer for their valuable comments and to thank you for allowing us to resubmit a revision of the manuscript. I hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in PLoS ONE. Sincerely yours, Metadel Adane (PhD) Response to reviewers Knowledge, Attitude and Hand Hygiene Practices towards COVID-19 among Taxi Drivers in Ethiopia (PONE-D-20-38254R1) Q1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at Response: Thank you for this important comment. We formatted the manuscript using the PLoS ONE style templates (Please see the revised version). Q2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. Response: We have received editing support from senior editor, whose name Lisa Penttila and acknowledged in the acknowledgment section (See in page 19 from liens 439 to 440). Q3. 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, or include a citation if it has been published previously. Response: Thank and we uploaded the questionnaire in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information SI and SII (See also in page 20). Q4. Please clearly describe the steps undertaken during pretesting and validation of the questionnaire. Response: Thank you for this important question. We elaborated in the updated version and please see in page 8 and 9. Q5. In the methods, please clarify and define the terms "permanent" versus "temporary" taxi drivers. Response: Sorry for the error, for this paper, no need to include about permanent" versus "temporary" taxi drivers. I deleted in the paper and please see the updated version in page 7 from lines 1378 to 140. Q6. Please clearly describe your rational for selecting the independent variables used in your statistical models. Response: Thank you for this important questions. To control potential confounders, variables with p<0.25 were included into the multivariable analysis. Variables with a significance level at p<0.05 from the multivariable logistic regression analysis of each models were taken as statistically significant and factors significantly associated with good knowledge, positive attitude and good hand hygiene practice towards COVID-19 among taxi drivers. The presence of multi-collinearity between independent variables was checked using standard error at the cut-off value of 2 and we found that a maximum standard error of 1.78, which indicated no multi-collinearity within independent variables. The Hosmer Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test [28] with p-value greater than 0.05 was used to check the fitness of each model; the p-value of the Model I, Model II and Model II was 0.935, 0.896, and 0.963, respectively, and indicated that all models were fit (Please see the updated version of the manuscript in page 9 and 10. Q7. In line 32-40, the scoring of the key dependent variables could be removed from this section since it has been fully explained in the methods section. Response: Thank you for this key comment. We updated the abstract by deleting the scoring of the key dependent variables as suggested (See in the updated version abstract section). Q8. Line 32, the statistical software used to analysis the data is supposed to be SPSS not SSPSS. The authors should correct this typo. Response: Sorry for this typo error. We make the correction. Background Q9. In line 95, the authors stated Communicable disease control but am not sure if that is the correct reference. The authors should cross-check it with that of Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Response: A good observation. The correct is Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We updated the manuscript (See in page 4 and 5 from lines 90 to 91. Methods: Q10. In line 149, the authors should carefully cite and reference the sample size formula used unless proven that it’s their own formula. Response: Thank, we cited the reference for the source of the formula for sample size determinations (see in page 7 in lines 142). Q11. In line 157-168, the authors should provide a reliability score/Cronbach's score of the questionnaire used since it was a newly developed questionnaire developed by the researchers themselves and has not being validated. Response: Many thanks for this very key comments. The reliability of the questionnaires for outcome variable measurements of knowledge, attitude and hand hygiene questions was checked using Cronbach's alpha and found to be a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.973, 0.897 and 0.928, respectively (see in the updated version) (See the revised version of the manuscript in page 9 in line 186. We agree with almost all the comments/questions raised by you. We would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to you for your valuable comments and to thank you for allowing us to resubmit a revision of the manuscript. I hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in PLoS ONE. Sincerely yours, Metadel Adane (PhD) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviwers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253452.r002
7 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Prasenjit Mitra, Editor Knowledge, Attitude and Hand Hygiene Practices towards COVID-19 among Taxi Drivers in Urbans of Ethiopia PONE-D-20-38254R1 Dear Dr. Adane, 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, Prasenjit Mitra, MD, MRSB, MIScT, FLS, FACSc, FAACC Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253452.r003
Formally Accepted
29 Jul 2021 Acceptance Letter - Prasenjit Mitra, Editor PONE-D-20-38254R1 COVID-19 Knowledge, Attitude and Frequent Hand Hygiene Practices among Taxi Drivers and associated factors in Urban Areas of Ethiopia Dear Dr. Adane: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Prasenjit Mitra Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253452.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .