PONE-D-22-02286Quality of life and associated factors among youth who use substance, central Gondar zone, Northwest Ethiopia, 2021;  Using Structural Equation ModelingPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tarekegn

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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: 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

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: 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 hope some of these comments would be useful.

Abstract

1. please improve result section with apply and mention statistical.

2.How do they reach the conclusions in the abstract?

Background

1.please use update references in this section.

this references might be useful "Quality of life and its related factors in women with substance use disorders referring to substance abuse treatment centers" or "Can substance abuse media literacy increase prediction of drug use in students?"

2.whats are your hypotheses? please mentioned its in this section or methods section.

Methods

1.whats are response rate in your study?

2. sampling technique and study setting very vague. please explain more. Geographical cluster of each district, is setting of your study, or special centers of "Kebele" are your setting of your study?

3.Measurements

Were these questioner adapted from an existing tested questionnaire or did the authors develop it themselves, tested it?

Discussion

1.Discussion does not explain the findings, Authors state other studies, but do not offer an explanation as to why they see the results that they see

2.Please try to include more relevant literature.

Reviewer #2: The study sample size is reasonable with adequate rule of thumb for 370 subjects. The model appears to have reasonable goodness of fit and RMSEA values. The analysis software used, which is routine in this context, appeared to adequately identify factors associated with health-related quality of life which is a major factor, naturally. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the relationships among exogenous, mediating, and endogenous variables which is notably the purpose of such software. There are many variables and the presentation is a descriptive summary of the relationships sought by the authors. One can get lost in the presentation with so much being described.

The characterization of the strength of the interdomain correlations is troubling. The authors note for example that Inter-domain correlation showed that there was a statistically significant correlation between domains, there is a highly positive correlation between environmental health domain and psychological health domain (r=0.61, p<0.001) and as compared with other domain's, psychological health domain and social relation health domain had a relatively

weak correlation between them (r= 0.49, p<0.001). How are weak and strong being decided?

The format of Table 3 makes it difficult to read and interpret the table. Please correct the alignment. There are typos in the manuscript. For example in the title of Fig. 3, Self Reted should obviously be Self Rated. Parcel in Figure 4 is in the footnote, but it looks like Parcil in the figure. The English should also be edited in places for clarity.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Quality of life and associated factors among the youth with substance use in Northwest Ethiopia: Using Structural Equation Modelling

PONE-D-22-02286R1

Dear Dr. Tarekegn

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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Kind regards,

Marianna Mazza

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

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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: Thanks for responding,the authors have adequately addressed comments and in my opinion this manuscript is now acceptable for publication.

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.Hanieh Jormand

Reviewer #2: No

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