Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 15, 2021
Decision Letter - Stefano Federici, Editor

PONE-D-21-26391

A scoping review of measurement of violence against women and disability

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Meyer,

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.

The Reviewer greatly enjoyed the manuscript and suggested only a few corrections. I invite, therefore, the authors to address the points raised by the Reviewer to make the manuscript suitable for publication. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 28 2022 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Stefano Federici, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

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

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2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

3. Thank you for stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript:

“This work was funded under the UNWomen-WHO Joint Programme on Violence against Women Data, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“This work was funded under the UNWomen-WHO Joint Programme on Violence against Women Data, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

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:

The Reviewer greatly enjoyed the manuscript and suggested only a few corrections. I invite, therefore, the authors to address the points raised by the Reviewer to make the manuscript suitable for publication.

[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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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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

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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 study focuses on a significant problem-violence against women with disabilities. Excellent work. The paper is well-written. I have few suggestions for strengthening the manuscript.

A general definition of disability or how authors defined disability early on in the paper could be included. On page 13 studies were excluded if they focused only on common mental health disorders—rationale could be provided as to why these were excluded.

The authors cover three bodies of literature and define two of these-disability focused research and intersection of disability and violence on page 10, could also elaborate more on the third-“measurement of disability in the context of research focused on violence against women”.

Page 17 says, 419 selected for full text review and an additional 269 were excluded after that. The count is 150 after exclusion and not 174. The sentence “A final 174 reports or manuscripts met the inclusion criteria” could be deleted from that para—that para is focusing only on peer reviewed literature. The next para could then be rephrased for clarity and the final count can be mentioned in that para.

Discussion/conclusion—The authors could elaborate more on how the gap in literature is impacting practice and policies for disabled women with exposures to violence and how addressing this gap is important for practitioners and policy makes

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Reviewer #1: No

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Revision 1

Authors’ response to reviewers

Manuscript title: A scoping review of measurement of violence against women and disability

To the Editors, PLoS One

Thank you for the recognition of the contribution of our manuscript, “A scoping review of measurement of violence against women and disability.” In response to the reviewer’s comments, some changes have been made to the manuscript. We appreciate the reviewer’s positive comments and feel that our responses to these helpful suggestions helped improve this manuscript. The reviewers’ comments, as well as journal requirements listed, are addressed point-by-point in turn below.

Editorial comments:

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements

We have formatted the manuscript according to these style requirements.

2. Grant information: We have removed the funding information from the manuscript. The funding information that is now in the online submission form reads as follows:

“This work was funded under the UNWomen-WHO Joint Programme on Violence against Women Data, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

Reviewer comments:

1. A general definition of disability or how authors defined disability early on in the paper could be included.

We have added the following definition on Page 7:

Disability is defined as “the interaction between individuals with a health condition…with personal and environmental factors including negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation and public buildings, and limited social support,” [18]; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also emphasizes social participation, such that “disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others” [19].

2. On page 13 studies were excluded if they focused only on common mental health disorders—rationale could be provided as to why these were excluded.

We have added the following rationale.

Common mental disorders were excluded as there is a robust evidence-base on VAW and common mental disorders. This evidence-base includes several systematic reviews and meta-analyses [33-35], and therefore we focused this review on an area with less well-developed measurement and methodology.

3. The authors cover three bodies of literature and define two of these-disability focused research and intersection of disability and violence on page 10, could also elaborate more on the third-“measurement of disability in the context of research focused on violence against women”.

We have added the following definition on Page 11: “We define measurement of disability in VAW research as research that focuses on questions of prevalence of violence that measure disability as a specific risk factor or variable within study objectives focusing on understanding VAW in a population or specific group.”

4. Page 17 says, 419 selected for full text review and an additional 269 were excluded after that. The count is 150 after exclusion and not 174. The sentence “A final 174 reports or manuscripts met the inclusion criteria” could be deleted from that para—that para is focusing only on peer reviewed literature. The next para could then be rephrased for clarity and the final count can be mentioned in that para.

We have edited as suggested, and the second paragraph now reads as follows:

The grey literature search was conducted separately, and identified 316 reports, of which 5 were selected for inclusion. In addition, 16 Demographic and Health Surveys and 3 reports of national violence against women studies met the inclusion criteria. With the 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts, a final 174 reports or manuscripts met the inclusion criteria.

5. Discussion/conclusion—The authors could elaborate more on how the gap in literature is impacting practice and policies for disabled women with exposures to violence and how addressing this gap is important for practitioners and policy makes

We have added the following text to the Discussion section: “Our findings indicate limitations in measurement and evidence-base, which impact policy-makers and programmers given the overall prevalence of violence against women with disabilities is unknown, which limits development and implementation of effective policies and support services. In addition, the lack of evidence concerning how different types of disabilities operate as risk factors compared to others, and can create different barriers and enables for women who experience violence seeking support, hampers effective programming tailored to specific needs.”

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Stefano Federici, Editor

A scoping review of measurement of violence against women and disability

PONE-D-21-26391R1

Dear Dr. Meyer,

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,

Stefano Federici, Ph.D.

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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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

**********

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 do not have additional comments. The authors addressed my suggested changes. The only minor edit is in the text added in the discussion--do you mean barriers and enablers? Enables seem like an error

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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: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Stefano Federici, Editor

PONE-D-21-26391R1

A scoping review of measurement of violence against women and disability

Dear Dr. Meyer:

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

Prof. Stefano Federici

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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