Tobacco smoking initiation among students in Samoa and health concerns

Baljeet Singh; Shamal Shivneel Chand; Hong Chen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258669

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 9, 2021
9 Aug 2021 Decision Letter - Gausal A Khan, Editor PONE-D-21-22399 Tobacco Smoking Initiation among students in Samoa and Health Concerns PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Singh, 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. All the comments raised by the reviwer should be adressed point to point appropriately. Please submit your revised manuscript by 10th Sept 2021. 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, Gausal A Khan, Ph.D;CSci, FRSB Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. 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. Additional Editor Comments : Please repley the comments point to point rasied by the reviwer [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: This study is interesting and have a great impact on public health threat, especially for young students in Samoa and the Pacific Island Countries. The data also insight on the world economy and policy making suggestions. Right now, the whole world is affected with COVID-19 infection and study reported that young smokers were more got infected with COVID-19 compared with non-smokers. 1. How does COVID-19 infection relate to the mortality rate with young smoker VS Non-smokers 2. How does the recovery from COVID-19 infection affected the young smoker? Reviewer #2: In this manuscript “Tobacco Smoking Initiation among students in Samoa and Health Concerns“ Singh et al. demonstrated a living problem of socio-economic, education and culture in context of tobacco smoking in the young generation of Samoa. The study has a significant impact apropos of socio-economic background, which is not only a problem of a particular area but it is the issue of many countries in all over the world. Here, authors demonstrated how home and friend circle environment, parental smoking, pocket money and mother’s education have an impact on youths in smoking in Samoa. They used empirical formula for the analysis: multinomial logit regression. However, I have few minor question: 1) Introduction is too long, authors can decrease the volume. 2) In table -1, sex, age should be bold 3) Authors used empirical model in the method section, they should mention the use of software/link. 4) In conclusion, in a few lines, authors may emphasize and write their main findings and followed by how to overcome that problem. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258669.r001
Revision 1
5 Sep 2021 Author Response Response to Reviewers’ comments We are very thankful to the reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments and suggestions. It has helped us to improve the manuscript significantly. 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 This study is based on survey data, which was collected through scientific methodology developed by World Health Organization (WHO). This is a normal practice in this kind of studies. We have done some revisions to the analysis section to provide a more technical tone to the script. We have used data collected by WHO. Reviewer #2: Yes ________________________________________ 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A The statistical analysis has been conducted using the multinominal logistic regression which is robust across different scenarios. In addition to this, we have also performed the Hosmer-Lemeshow Goodness-of-Fit test to show the excellent fit of the regression model. The test overall shows that the model fits the data well from which the discussions are outlayed. Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: This study is interesting and have a great impact on public health threat, especially for young students in Samoa and the Pacific Island Countries. The data also insight on the world economy and policy making suggestions. Right now, the whole world is affected with COVID-19 infection and study reported that young smokers were more got infected with COVID-19 compared with non-smokers. 1. How does COVID-19 infection relate to the mortality rate with young smoker VS Non-smokers We have cited and included some papers analyzing on the above question in this paper. Prats-Uribe, Xie (2021) find no difference in mortality rate between young smokers and non-smokers, however young smokers were twice likely to get infected with serious COVID-19 illness compared to non-smokers, an important finding from the United States. 2. How does the recovery from COVID-19 infection affected the young smoker? To our knowledge, there is no studies on long-term illness and impact of smoking on recoveries of illness from COVID-19, nevertheless, the higher risk of young smokers of been medically vulnerable, the medical policy intervention to address smoking among young smokers is likely to decrease their medical vulnerability to severe illnesses. This part as been included in the paper. Reviewer #2: In this manuscript “Tobacco Smoking Initiation among students in Samoa and Health Concerns“ Singh et al. demonstrated a living problem of socio-economic, education and culture in context of tobacco smoking in the young generation of Samoa. The study has a significant impact apropos of socio-economic background, which is not only a problem of a particular area but it is the issue of many countries in all over the world. Here, authors demonstrated how home and friend circle environment, parental smoking, pocket money and mother’s education have an impact on youths in smoking in Samoa. They used empirical formula for the analysis: multinomial logit regression. However, I have few minor question: 1) Introduction is too long, authors can decrease the volume. As recommended, we have reduced the size of the introduction section by removing few sentences and condensing main ideas. 2) In table -1, sex, age should be bold As recommended, we have made the above changes in the paper. 3) Authors used empirical model in the method section, they should mention the use of software/link. Authors have used Stata for conducting statistical analysis. This information has been included in the empirical model section. 4) In conclusion, in a few lines, authors may emphasize and write their main findings and followed by how to overcome that problem. ________________________________________ 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 Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258669.r002
4 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Gausal A Khan, Editor Tobacco Smoking Initiation among students in Samoa and Health Concerns PONE-D-21-22399R1 Dear Dr. Singh, 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, Gausal A Khan, Ph.D;CSci, FRSB 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: (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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A 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: (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: The manuscript elicited attention on behavior and pattern of public smoking among family members and friends have great impact on students in Samoa. The manuscript used the data from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) and also analysis was done using multinomial logistic regression to find out the various factors which influence the students in the small Pacific Island Country of Samoa towards smoking. The manuscript is well described all parts and also addressed all comments. I am highly recommend this manuscript for publication. Reviewer #2: (No Response) ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258669.r003
Formally Accepted
21 Oct 2021 Acceptance Letter - Gausal A Khan, Editor PONE-D-21-22399R1 Tobacco Smoking Initiation among students in Samoa and Health Concerns Dear Dr. Singh: 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. Gausal A Khan Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258669.r004

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