Young mothers’ attitudes towards domestic violence and their maternal healthcare services utilization in Bangladesh: A multilevel cluster analysis

Sawkia Afroz; Tasmiah Sad Sutopa; Md Rabiul Haque

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0268062

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 30, 2021
21 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Enamul Kabir, Editor PONE-D-21-14055Young mothers’ attitudes towards domestic violence and their maternal healthcare services utilization in Bangladesh: A multilevel cluster analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Haque, 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. There are some minor issues identified by the reviewers those need to be fixed before taking final decision. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 05 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. 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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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "No - The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." At this time, please address the following queries: a) Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. b) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” c) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders. d) If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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 Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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: It is a well written paper; I suggest just a few comments for more improvement. The introduction section is well written and nicely structured. Few comments, the authors could review for repetitive things such as still birth and death of fetus as an indirect consequence of violence against women during pregnancy. Methods section: 1. Data source is described to be the DHS. A little more specific details of how the data were obtained, what procedures were followed and long with what, if, a letter was required and for which datasets/variables data was accessed and how long it took would give readers more picture of the DHS data access. 2. The authors mentioned including only currently married young mothers, aged 15-24 years who had a recent live birth in three years preceding the survey. A detailed explanation why would be important: for example what was the rationale of excluding those with stillbirth outcome?. Results: Informative a bit lengthy. Also could use language and editorial revisions. some of the sentences were too long and difficult to understand the intention/message. Conclusion: Appears too long. Suggest summarizing. Reviewer #2: The study is a good piece of exploration in the BDHS data on an important topic. The authors explored utilization of antenatal care and health-center-based delivery by young mothers in Bangladesh along with an evaluation of its association with submissive attitude of young mothers towards domestic violence. The overall methodology, analysis looks sound. However, there is necessity and room for improvement in interpretation. I've highlighted the areas where I have put queries or suggestions in the manuscript draft. There are minor grammatical mistakes (incorrect use of passive voice in several areas) in the draft which should be corrected before re-submission. Note that I didn't highlight those areas. ****** 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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-14055 review ksa.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268062.r001
Revision 1
1 Feb 2022 Author Response 1 February 2022 Dr. Enamul Kabir Academic Editor PLOS ONE Cambridge, United Kingdom Subject: Submission of revised manuscript PONE-D-21-14055 for publication into PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Kabir We Sawkia Afroz, Tasmiah Sad Sutopa, and Md Rabiul Haque, are grateful for providing constructive feedback to our submission PONE-D-21-14055 and giving us the opportunity for resubmission. We have reviewed the full manuscript and addressed the comment very carefully. Reviewer #1: It is a well written paper; I suggest just a few comments for more improvement. The introduction section is well written and nicely structured. Few comments, the authors could review for repetitive things such as still birth and death of fetus as an indirect consequence of violence against women during pregnancy. Response: The text below has been incorporated in page 3, line numbers 42-47. “Evidence also suggested that in developing countries like Bangladesh miscarriage, preterm birth, stillbirth, low birth weight in newborns and maternal deaths followed by maternal morbidity are indirect consequences of domestic violence against women during pregnancy.” Methods section: 1. Data source is described to be the DHS. A little more specific details of how the data were obtained, what procedures were followed and long with what, if, a letter was required and for which datasets/variables data was accessed and how long it took would give readers more picture of the DHS data access. Response: The following text has been incorporated in page 5, line numbers 102-110. “In order to get access and use of the BDHS data, we registered in the MEASURE DHS [Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results, Demographic and Health Surveys] (www.measuredhs.com) website and requested for BDHS 2014 and 2017-18 datasets mentioning the study objectives. Afterward, DHS authorized us to download the required datasets within three working days. With the permission of the MEASURE DHS, data from the recent two waves of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys (BDHS), 2014 and 2018 were downloaded, merged, and analyzed. We used children’s data sets from each survey wave to extract necessary variables included in this study (29,39).” 2. The authors mentioned including only currently married young mothers, aged 15-24 years who had a recent live birth in three years preceding the survey. A detailed explanation why would be important: for example what was the rationale of excluding those with stillbirth outcome? Response: In response to this point, the following text has been incorporated in page 6, line numbers 125-132. “The BDHS survey only included the information of maternal health care services for women of the reproductive age group who had a live birth in 3 years preceding the survey. The rationale for excluding those with stillbirth outcomes is the unavailability of maternal healthcare service information for stillbirth in the BDHS survey 2014 and 2017-18. Additionally, information on attitude towards domestic violence was collected for currently married women only in these surveys. However, this study in line with the objectives considered only currently married young mothers, aged 15-24 years who had a recent live birth in three years preceding the survey.” Results: Informative a bit lengthy. Also could use language and editorial revisions. Some of the sentences were too long and difficult to understand the intention/message. Response: Thanks for spotting the errors. We have gone through the manuscript rigorously and revised the long sentences to make them clear and understandable. Conclusion: Appears too long. Suggest summarizing. Response: In response, we have reviewed and summarized the conclusion part. Reviewer #2: The study is a good piece of exploration in the BDHS data on an important topic. The authors explored utilization of antenatal care and health-center-based delivery by young mothers in Bangladesh along with an evaluation of its association with submissive attitude of young mothers towards domestic violence. The overall methodology, analysis looks sound. However, there is necessity and room for improvement in interpretation. I've highlighted the areas where I have put queries or suggestions in the manuscript draft. There are minor grammatical mistakes (incorrect use of passive voice in several areas) in the draft which should be corrected before re-submission. Note that I didn't highlight those areas. Responses: Based on reviewer’s recommendations, the highlighted texts have been modified as below: 1. The highlighted words “strongly correlated” has been replaced with “associated” in page 14 line number 289 based on reviewer’s reommendation. 2. The highlighted text “strong association between domestic violence and the utilization” has been modified as “---association between attitude towards domestic violence and the utilization---” in page 16 line number 330. 3. The highlighted text “analyzing the effects of domestic violence on young mothers’ four or more ANC and health-center-based delivery care” has been modified as “---analyzing the effect of favorable attitude of young mothers towards domestic violence on four or more ANC and health-center-based delivery care---” in page no 16 line numbers 337-338. 4. The highlighted text “the utilization of four or more ANC and health-center-based delivery services were increased less over the years among young mothers who had favorable attitudes towards domestic violence than those who had the opposite attitudes” has been modified as “---young mothers who had favorable attitudes towards domestic violence were less likely to utilize four or more ANC and health-center-based delivery care than those who had the opposite attitudes---” in page no 16 line numbers 345-348. 5. In response to the reviewrs’ recommendation, the definition of “domestic violence” has been elaborated in the methods section (page no 7 line number 155-163) as below: “The key focus of this study is on the independent variable ‘young mothers’ favorable attitude toward domestic violence which is considered as a proxy variable for domestic violence. A composite variable was measured through young mothers’ attitudes towards justification of wife-beating or hitting by their husbands, which was grounded by their responses to five questions: 1) if she burns the food, 2) if she argues with husband, 3) if she goes out without telling husband, 4) if she neglects the children, and 5) if she refuses to have sexual intercourse with husband. However, this variable for analysis purposes was coded into two categories: (1) ‘favorable’ refers to those who justified domestic violence with at least one of the above reasons, and (2) ‘opposed’ refers to otherwise.” 6. The highlighted text “Besides due to shyness, scarcity of female healthcare practitioners, and restriction imposed by husbands and family members many employed young mothers sometimes feel uncomfortable using the WHO-required number of ANC and hospital-based delivery care has been modified as “Furthermore, employed young mothers sometimes feel uncomfortable in using these services due to shyness and family restrictions (38). Also, under-reporting of health center-based delivery, especially for private hospitals or clinics might be contribute to such lower utilization of services among young mothers (16, 23, 33, 51, 60)” in page no 18 line numbers 399-405. 7. Considering the reviewers' recommendation, we have addressed the grammatical errors throughout the manuscript and incorrect use of passive voice in some areas. The manuscript has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere. We have no conflicts of interests to disclose and no reservation for any reviewers. All authors have seen and approved the revised version of the manuscript. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Corresponding Author (PONE-D-21-14055) Md Rabiul Haque, PhD Professor, Department of Population Sciences University of Dhaka, Bangladesh Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_PONE-D-21-14055.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268062.r002
11 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Enamul Kabir, Editor PONE-D-21-14055R1Young mothers’ attitudes towards domestic violence and their maternal healthcare services utilization in Bangladesh: A multilevel cluster analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Haque, 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 Apr 25 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. 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: https://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, Enamul Kabir 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? 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 #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 #2: No ****** 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 #2: First, I want to thank the authors for the changes they made in the revised version. However, I still think the English of the manuscript is poor and needs revision. The authors are suggested to increase clarity of their writing by revising it with a native speaker or an expert user of English or a professional grammar editing software/service. ****** 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 #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.0268062.r003
Revision 2
9 Apr 2022 Author Response We have uploaded the required files (docs) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_PONE-D-21-14055_R2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268062.r004
22 Apr 2022 Decision Letter - Enamul Kabir, Editor Young mothers’ attitudes towards domestic violence and their maternal healthcare services utilization in Bangladesh: A multilevel cluster analysis PONE-D-21-14055R2 Dear Dr. Haque, 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, Enamul Kabir Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268062.r005
Formally Accepted
21 Jul 2022 Acceptance Letter - Enamul Kabir, Editor PONE-D-21-14055R2 Young mothers’ attitudes towards domestic violence and their maternal healthcare services utilization in Bangladesh: A multilevel cluster analysis Dear Dr. Haque: 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. Enamul Kabir Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268062.r006

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