PONE-D-21-11265

Facemask wearing behavior to prevent COVID-19 and associated factors among bank workers in Dessie City, Ethiopia

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hassen,

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 Jul 30 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:

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Zixin Wang, PhD.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2.  Please amend your current ethics statement to address the following concerns: Please explain why written consent was not obtained, how you recorded/documented participant consent, and if the ethics committees/IRBs approved this consent procedure."

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.  If the original language is written in non-Latin characters, for example Amharic, Chinese, or Korean, please use a file format that ensures these characters are visible."

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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: Yes

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: Yes

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: 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: 1. P4, line 76: there should be a period after the citation.

2. P5, line 89: I suggest to combine the paragraph beginning with “cases of COVID-19” with the first paragraph as these two paragraphs were more closely related, which introduced the situation of COVID-19 pandemic

3. The introduction should provide information about the preventive measures in the Dessie City. Many countries have implemented massive preventive measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 such as lockdown, social distancing, and face-masking wearing in all public venues. Any preventive measures in the investigated city? Is it mandatory? Such background information should be introduced to help readers understand the situation.

4. Any similar COVID-19 research among bank workers (e.g., the prevalence of COVID-19 infection or prevalence of preventive measures in this population)? I think the introduction should give more discussion about this specific population.

5. P6, line 109: as this study was only conducted in the Dessie city, I suggest to describe the COVID-19 situation in Dessie city during the time of investigation.

6. P7, line 31: what about the proportion of randomly selected participants from each back?

7. The author should provide more information about the measurements, e.g., the reliability of the used scales and whether these scales have been used in previous studies or they were self-constructed items. I suggest to add an appendix about the measurements as it was only briefly mentioned in the text.

8. P13, line 277: there should be a period after the citation.

9. Did the participants know they would have a survey about face-masking in advance? This might have an influence on their face-masking behavior due to social desirability. The author may discuss this point.

10. There are some spelling errors (e.g., p12 line 252, it should be "showed"). The author should have a careful check.

11. For discussion, the author should consider the local context and local COVID-19 situation to discuss and interpret the findings as the study was conducted in a single city. The generability of findings should also be discussed.

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting study exploring the associated factors of mask wearing behaviours among bank workers. However, substantial revision is suggested. My major comments are listed below:

1. It is suggested further elaborating on the high risk of COVID-19 infection/transmission and thus needs for targeted health promotion among this population. Now the authors only mentioned that these workers have frequent direct or indirect contact with the public, however, this also applies to many other types of workers in the service industry. It is not clear how the findings would contribute to the extant literature.

2. Although the study focused on a special population group, the studied factors are quite general. To inform the development of tailored promotion strategies among this population, more bank worker-specific factors should be included, such as some contextual factors regarding protection measures provided in the working environment. It shall be mentioned somewhere in the Discussion that how the identified relationships are different from/consistent with those found among general population or other working population.

3. Now the measures of knowledge and attitudes were dichotomized for analysis based on the mean score of the sample rather than a more valid and meaningful cut-off point. I suggest treating them as the original continuous variables as dichotomization itself caused loss of information and reporting the reliability alpha for the attitude scale as well. Also, it is not suggested defining those with higher scores as “positive attitudes” and those with lower scores as “negative attitudes”, as the valence of attitude shall be inherently determined by the measurement items, for example, there are both positive and negative attitudes toward mask wearing.

4. The study explored the use of “non-medical mask” which is good, but please clarify a bit whether the measure of “facemask wearing behaviour” captured this aspect when defining good behaviour of facemask wearing. Please also clarify that whether this behaviour was self-reported or objectively observed by the interview fieldworkers.

5. The study used “cluster random sampling” but not “simple random sampling”, please revise the related parts accordingly. The selected banks shall be included as a covariate in the analysis or multilevel regression models shall be used for handling such clustered data.

6. Table 1-5 shall be combined into one table to make the presentation more succinct.

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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-21-11265R1

Facemask wearing behavior to prevent COVID-19 and associated factors among bank workers in Dessie City, Ethiopia

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hassen,

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 09 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,

Zixin Wang, PhD.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

I noticed that some comments raised by Reviewer 2 were not addressed during the revision. The authors should address all comments raised by the reviewers.

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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)

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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 authors have addressed some of my previous comments, but the others are left unsolved.

First, please discuss the generalizability of the findings to general population and other work populations. Please refer to my previous #2 comment.

Second, regarding my previous #3 comment, 1) I suggest not defining those with higher scores as “positive attitudes” and and those with lower scores as “negative attitudes”. Instead, high/low level of attitudes can be used; 2) Please report the reliability alpha for the attitude scale. This is necessary even if a dichotomized form was used for analysis.

Third, regarding my previous #4 comment, necessary information has been provided by the authors, please also include it in the manuscript, e.g., the measure of facemask wearing behavior” captured whether wearing a facemask of any type; and it is a self-reported measure.

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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: Yes: Rui She

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.

Facemask wearing behavior to prevent COVID-19 and associated factors among bank workers in Dessie City, Ethiopia

PONE-D-21-11265R2

Dear Dr. Hassen,

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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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,

Zixin Wang, PhD.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: