Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa:—Are disabled children lagging behind?

Huafeng Zhang; Stein T. Holden

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0284821

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 11, 2022
8 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Verda Salman, Editor PONE-D-22-30702Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa: - Are disabled children lagging behind?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Zhang, 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. ============================== Major Revisions Required ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 22 2023 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. 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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. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: This paper has been undertaken as part of the research project “Education outcome variability in children with disabilities: Structure, institution or agency?” funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project Number 300635). However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The paper has been undertaken as part of the research project “Education outcome variability in children with disabilities: Structure, institution or agency?” funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project Number 300635). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Additional Editor Comments: Major revisions required. [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. 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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: I have reviewed the research paper “ Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa: - Are disabled children lagging behind?”. I completed the assessment as per the shared guidelines and enclosed the following observations. 1. The literature review needs to be more extensive and more extensive in scope. Please revise your literature review; the methodology part needs to be added to most of the papers you mentioned( Like which methodology they used). 2. At the end of section 3, Please explain why you have used this methodology if there is any other methodology in the previous literature, the pros and cons of using the current methodology, and why it is superior to other methodologies in literature. 3. Consider the conclusion section seriously; it is not up to the mark in its present form. Please divide conclusions into three parts, as if you are telling someone about your research findings in 5 to 7 lines. Then based on your results, discuss the policy implications, limitations, and the way forward for future researchers. Reviewer #2: The study includes a thorough analysis and addresses a relevant gap in the literature. The following may, however, be taken into consideration as a research article: 1. The manuscript is not in conformity with the journal's style and format (reference style, table specification, etc.). (Perhaps arrangements have been made with the journal editors.) 2. Writing concisely in this study with several sections would be preferred by readers. The introduction and conceptual framework section, for instance, could be written very concisely. It is also possible to discuss the "MICS survey" only in the methodology section. 3. "The response rates to the numeracy test among different groups of children are generally quite high (about 95% or higher) but much lower among the never-in-school disabled sample (76.1%)". (If by 95% or higher you are referring to EISC, for clarity's sake, it may be indicated appropriately or better yet, reframed.) 4. Please indicate the limitations of the study (aside from the fact that the test was able to evaluate only basic numeracy skills). For instance, were all the assumptions you mentioned met? A separate section for outlining such limitations and directions for future research would be appreciated. ****** 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: Yes: Francis Acquah ******** [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.0284821.r001
Revision 1
29 Mar 2023 Author Response Responses to editor: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. 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 Response: The reference style and format are revised to meet PLOS ONE’s style requirements. 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: This paper has been undertaken as part of the research project “Education outcome variability in children with disabilities: Structure, institution or agency?” funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project Number 300635). However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Response: The funding resource is removed from the manuscript. We confirm that the funding statement does not need revision. Responses to reviewers: Reviewer #1: I have reviewed the research paper "Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa: - Are disabled children lagging behind?". I completed the assessment as per the shared guidelines and enclosed the following observations. Response: We would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable comments that have helped us to improve upon the paper. 1. The literature review needs to be more extensive and more extensive in scope. Please revise your literature review; the methodology part needs to be added to most of the papers you mentioned (Like which methodology they used). Response: The reviewer was not specific on his/her suggested scope extension in the literature review. Therefore, we revise the literature review to include several aspects which we think are most relevant to this paper. We first discuss the empirical evidence of disabled children's education in comparable studies, mainly available w.r.t. school attendance and enrolment but not school performance/achievement. We then present several studies in developing countries assessing the school performance of disabled children. But they do not differentiate different disability types. Finally, we discuss a few studies that differentiate disability types, mainly available in Asian countries. A brief description of the methodology used by those studies is now included in section 3. 2. At the end of section 3, Please explain why you have used this methodology, if there is any other methodology in the previous literature, the pros and cons of using the current methodology, and why it is superior to other methodologies in literature. Response: In section 3, before discussing the methodology used by this paper, the methodology applied by previous studies is discussed. Then we discuss the methodology used in this paper. We suggest considering children's completed school years as both the outcome of disability and as an endogenous treatment of skill learning. Therefore, we propose to use the instrumental variable method to control for the potential endogeneity bias associated with completed school years. 3. Consider the conclusion section seriously; it is not up to the mark in its present form. Please divide conclusions into three parts, as if you are telling someone about your research findings in 5 to 7 lines. Then based on your results, discuss the policy implications, limitations, and the way forward for future researchers. Response: The conclusion section is rewritten to include the following: Research findings Policy implications and limitations The way forward for future research Reviewer #2: The study includes a thorough analysis and addresses a relevant gap in the literature. The following may, however, be taken into consideration as a research article: 1. The manuscript is not in conformity with the journal's style and format (reference style, table specification, etc.). (Perhaps arrangements have been made with the journal editors.) Response: We would like to thank the reviewer for the constructive assessment and comments. The reference style and format are revised. 2. Writing concisely in this study with several sections would be preferred by readers. The introduction and conceptual framework section, for instance, could be written very concisely. It is also possible to discuss the "MICS survey" only in the methodology section. Response: The introduction and conceptual framework section are revised to be more concise. The "MICS survey" discussions are merged to the methodology section and deleted from the introduction section. 3. "The response rates to the numeracy test among different groups of children are generally quite high (about 95% or higher) but much lower among the never-in-school disabled sample (76.1%)". (If by 95% or higher you are referring to EISC, for clarity's sake, it may be indicated appropriately or better yet, reframed.) Response: The sentence is revised to clarify the group of children the number refers to. 4. Please indicate the limitations of the study (aside from the fact that the test was able to evaluate only basic numeracy skills). For instance, were all the assumptions you mentioned met? A separate section for outlining such limitations and directions for future research would be appreciated. Response: The conclusion section is rewritten to include the following: Research findings Policy implications and limitations The way forward for future research Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284821.r002
10 Apr 2023 Decision Letter - Verda Salman, Editor Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa: - Are disabled children lagging behind? PONE-D-22-30702R1 Dear Dr. Zhang, 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, Verda Salman, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Accepted for publication Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284821.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Apr 2023 Acceptance Letter - Verda Salman, Editor PONE-D-22-30702R1 Numeracy skills learning of children in Africa: - Are disabled children lagging behind? Dear Dr. Zhang: 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. Verda Salman Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284821.r004

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