PONE-D-21-12498COVID-19 related knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Indian Population: An online national cross-sectional surveyPLOS ONE

Dear Piyoosh Kumar Singh

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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: I did not see any reliability and validity test. We should know the Cronbach alpha value for this questionnaire. Would you please Provide the flow chart of your research? I did not see the objective in the abstract, And in methodology, please mention the exclusion criteria. In the result, please mention in of table below the statistic that you used. I saw some paragraphs did not mention the table

For discussion, please add more the similar study in others country.

In conclusion, please make sure the statement based on the objective of the study

Reviewer #2: Overall found this to be a good read and well done research taking into account the circumstances of the pandemic at the time of the study. That shows forward-thinking and adaptability.

Introduction

second paragraph. Kindly add the year 2020 to the 27th January to prevent any ambiguity regarding the time although it is apparently obvious. It does not hurt to add it.

Last sentence of paragraph 2; would be good to have the figures as of the time of this article being published or a recent update in 2021. Also "....as on August..." should be "...as of August.."

third paragraph.

Kindly rephrase this to reflect that you refer to that period. Maybe you could change "so far" to "At that time" and "have been developed" to "had been developed" as well as the subsequent tense of the sentence to match.

Regarding the situation during the study period, kindly change the tense to the past tense like above to reflect what was happening at that time. In this current state it sounds like that is the current situation in India.

METHODS

Line 6: participants were also asked to share the survey link with "their" instead of "his"

Questionnaire

line 5: you mention infection status. I think this would be better if defined as it leaves room for subjectivity. What does this mean for a participant who selects yes or no. Is their answer based on official results from the country's testing program or from symptoms the patient has or some other means.

Scoring and analysis

State the basis of the scoring system used. Was it arbitrarily generated or based on for example WHO's questions you developed your questionnaires on? It is important that this is very clear as your entire study seems to be based on this scoring system.

RESULTS

the scores are mentioned again in a manner i believe not to be intuitive. Clarifying the scoring system will help this. Also state what the overall score would have been again to make it easy for the reader to follow. Kindly review this in the results section.

KNowledge and Awareness assessment

Line 7: the results demonstrate that knowledge scores.... The first part can be removed to make the sentence less wordy and read better. It could be "knowledge scores were found to

be high in the age group of 31 and above, female gender, working participants, individuals with

higher education, and people living in the urban area."

Discussion

The first paragraph provides context and the need for your work. This belongs in the introduction as justification. The discussion should begin with key findings of the study

Limitations should also come before the conclusions

Reviewer #3: Dear Authors,

Please kindly refer to my specific comments for improvement of the manuscript below:

1. Keywords in abstracts - There are a few keywords that I find unnecessary e.g. awareness and survey. Please kindly revise

2. Spelling - please standardize the spelling for 'coronavirus' vs 'corona virus'.

3. Methodology - Please refer to the questions below:

- Was there any target population planned before the distribution of the survey? I understand that the survey was distributed in Facebook and Whatsapp. However, there must be target groups that you were trying to reach. Please clarify.

- Has the questionnaire undergone reliability and validity tests? If yes, please include the Cronbach's alpha values.

- Who performed the questionnaire translation? Did the translation process follow a standard protocol? Please elaborate.

- Please revise the total number of questions to 45 and not 56 as the other 11 questions were related to demographics.

- What does the term 'dropout' response refer to here? I personally think that the term is not applicable in a survey-type research.

- What was the formula used to calculate the sample size in this research? Please clarify and think of the need to calculate the sample size for this type of research.

4. Results - the overall results presentation were quite vague in presentation i.e. the tables and descriptions. Please refer to more specific comments below:

- Awareness was mentioned in some parts of the results and conclusion. However, there were no questions on awareness in the questionnaire. Please clarify.

- An example of vague sentence - 'Education shows a significant difference in the knowledge and attitude dimensions;. Please revise.

- Response rate was not reported. As this is an online survey, I would expect to see a response rate. This is where it is important that target populations are identified at the early stage of the study.

- 40.9% of the respondents were students. This could be due to chance but this is why it is important that ttarget populations are identified.

5. Conclusion - some sentences were ambiguous. Please rephrase.

Thank you and all the best.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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COVID-19 related knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Indian Population: An online national cross-sectional survey

PONE-D-21-12498R1

Dear Dr. Piyoosh Kumar 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.

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Kind regards,

Muhammad Junaid Farrukh

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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