PONE-D-22-19685From little girls to adult women: Changes in age at marriage in Scheduled Castes from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, IndiaPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The article is very interesting and reinforces the importance of the influence of education on social and economic outcomes related to girls and women. A topic of great relevance in the global agenda to reduce gender inequality. To improve the quality of the manuscript, it is necessary to carry out the corrections suggested by the reviewers.

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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: Partly

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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: 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 article is very interesting and reinforces the importance of the influence of education on social and economic outcomes related to girls and women.

The introduction, method, results and discussion are adequately described, however I have some suggestions:

Materials and methods

a) Describe in more detail the genealogical method of age estimation, used to validate the information obtained;

b) Detail the “crosscheck” described on page 6, line 140

Results:

a) I suggest that the legends of the figures are next to them (Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4);

b) Review the description in Table 2, as the data in the text is different from the data presented in the Table (Line 229-231, page 10).

Reviewer #2: The theme presented is current and relevant. Girls' vulnerabilities and penalties for maternity and marriage are exacerbated in contexts of poverty and social inequality. The article must be published, but with an adjustment in relation to the presentation of the database. The text is very well written and brings important results on gender inequalities in the private sphere. The work innovated by resorting to cohort analysis. This work complements the analyzes done for both India and looks at the positive impacts of education as a protective factor for child marriage.

The work presented is relevant to the literature and brings consistent results. Although the authors have made an effort to choose and apply the data analysis model, as well as to present and discuss the results, the same effort is not observed in the description of the database.

It would be interesting to specify more about the data source used. What are the criteria for choosing respondents and how can these criteria bias the sample? How does this sample resemble the female population of the studied locations? To what extent can the survey results, based on this sample, be generalized to the female population of the two states?

I could not identify, from the information provided, the place where the database could be consulted.

Small suggestions:

i) It would be interesting to indicate N in the regression model tables.

ii) The data presented in lines 293 to 309 would be easier to understand if they were presented in tables.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Juliano dos Santos

Reviewer #2: No

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From little girls to adult women: Changes in age at marriage in Scheduled Castes from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, India

PONE-D-22-19685R1

Dear Dr. Liczbińska

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,

Karina Cardoso Meira, 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

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

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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: 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

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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: All suggested changes were accepted by the authors and the article.

The topic is relevant and deserves to be highlighted

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: Juliano dos Santos

Reviewer #2: No

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