PONE-D-21-34281Spatial distribution and determinants of HIV prevalence among adults in urban Ethiopia: Findings from the Ethiopia Population-based HIV Impact Assessment Survey (2017–2018)PLOS ONE

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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: No

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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: No

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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: 

� The scope of the study is well designed to delineate hotspot HIV transmission risk.

� The study result cloud be used to control and management of the HIV infection in the vulnerable community through proper intervention measures target the gender and affected age groups with efforts of public health officials and national health programmers

� Random Sampling methods for field data collection of HIV epidemiological information in the selected house hold, and geo-coordinates of the house hold location are depicted on map, using GPS.

� Geo-Spatial analysis was applied significantly

� Moran I geo-statistical analysis measure of spatial autocorrelation in area data, explaining the degree of dependence between values of a variable at different geographic locations.

� Geographically weighted regression (GWR) analysis was used to establish the relationship of covariates.

� The interpolation of spatial prediction of HIV infection using Kriging methods, and results reflect the real situation of the ground.

Reviewer #2: Please find my comments and suggestions below. I have mainly focused on the spatial analysis aspects of this study and please read my suggestions below.

Study variables and measurement (Lines 87-98)

Please clearly define your outcome variable. Please define the geo-linked HIV prevalence, geo-linked to what geographical level? It is not clearly described how the enumeration areas (EAs) are related to “towns” Does each enumeration area consist of one town? Or do you need to aggregate several EAs to the town level?

When you define the prevalence of HIV, it is not clear what a cluster means. Does “cluster” refer to an EA or a town? When you are mentioning that you have calculated the weighted HIV prevalence in each town, but you did not describe the weighting method.

In Figure 2 you are presenting a prevalence map, but the area boundaries are not defined. Are those provinces in Ethiopia? Additionally, as you have mentioned just a small portion of EAs could be sampled from “Somali” district, and for that reason, you should change the map to include a small portion of that district. Figure 2 implies that HIV prevalence is low in Somali district, but we do not know because the population was not included in the EPHIA survey.

Line 91 – Please state that the outcome variable for your regression model (OLS) was the weighted HIV prevalence in each town.

Line 92 – “Study variables” is a confusing term, because study variables could include the outcome (e.g., dependent) variable and the predictor (e.g., independent) variables. You should use “predictor” or “independent” variables instead of study variables.

Analysis (Lines 139-190)

The hotspot analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*statistic) is not a spatial interpolation method. Moreover, you did not present any local clustering (hot spot) analysis. Please describe in detail your Kriging method, because there is more than one Kriging method that you can use. Kriging is a spatial interpolation method and you can not identify statistically significant clusters of high or low HIV prevalence based on Kriging analysis. You might confuse Kriging with the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic or the Local Moran’s I method where you can identify high or low (if you use Getis-Ord Gi*) and high-high, low-low, low-high, and high-low (if you use Local Moran’s I) HIV prevalence clusters, but you did not present any of those results.

You can read my previous papers where I have used and described various spatial epidemiology methods:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235291

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-015-1106-6

Line 148 - Global Moran’s I statistic evaluates the extent of spatial heterogeneity. You should define at what distance band did you observe the highest Moran's I value (see my papers for the methods). Please also define what type of conceptualization parameter did you use, because you can use more than one (e.g., zone of indifference, inverse distance, etc.). I think that you should use and present local Moran’s I analysis to identify local HIV clusters.

Line 168 – Please define your GWR model. What type of spatial weights matrix did you use? What type of GRW did you use, spatial lag model or spatial error model?

You can read about them at:

https://s4.ad.brown.edu/resources/tutorial/modul2/geoda3final.pdf

Thank you!

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Masimalai Palaniyandi., M.Sc.,M.Tech.,Ph.D.,

Reviewer #2: Yes: Csaba Varga

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer Recommendation and Comments for Manuscript Number PONE.pdf

Spatial distribution and determinants of HIV prevalence among adults in urban Ethiopia: Findings from the Ethiopia Population-based HIV Impact Assessment Survey (2017–2018)

PONE-D-21-34281R1

Dear Dr. Argefa,

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,

Mona Pathak, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: 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

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

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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: (No Response)

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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: Dr.Palaniyandi Masimalai

Reviewer #2: Yes: Csaba Varga

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