PONE-D-22-22097Socio-demographic and neighbourhood factors influencing urban green space use and development at home: A population-based survey in Accra, GhanaPLOS 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: Yes

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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 paper focuses on an important topic and the findings could contribute to promoting the establishment, maintenance and use of green spaces in Ghana and especially in the capital city of Ghana (Accra). The authours may wish to address the following issues:

1. Abstract: It may be useful to indicate the statistical analysis employed in the study

2. Study Design and Methods: It might be useful to explain why the researchers interviewed an additional adult member in in households where there were other adults members and who were willing to participate in the study. Also, what procedure was used in selecting the additional adult member for interview?

3. It will be informative to explain how the spacial data on green spaces was analyzed

4. Results: Table 2. The authours might wish to explain why they separated the household heads from the entire study participants into a different column "Household Heads".

*It may also be informative for the authours to do cross tabulation of the socio-demographic characteristics against the exposure of interest to determine those that are significantly associated with the exposure of interest rather than the use of only frequencies and percentages. This should inform which of these variable are included in the logistic regression analysis. *Given the multiple sub-level tabulations that have been done, and the small numbers of responses to such questions (n), the use of proportions in the interpretation of the results is misleading.

Table 3. The responses to the question on "use of green spaces in community/neighborhood" is confusing. The authours may wish to revise and present a more clearer table

5. Conclusion: The conclusion should state clearly which socio-demographic factors influence use and development of green spaces in Accra

6. The manuscript will benefit substantially from professional proof reading

Reviewer #2: PLOS ONE

PONE-D-22-22097

Socio-demographic and neighbourhood factors influencing urban green space use and

development at home: A population-based survey in Accra, Ghana

The study combines individual level primary data with contextual secondary data to examine factors associated with access and use of green spaces in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. This is a timely and important study given its relevance to awareness of the fast depleting green spaces in urban environments. However, there are some critical issues that need addressing.

Abstract, provide a brief background of the study area (Accra) to help the reader appreciate the context of the study.

Introduction – Paragraph 2, the authors should use statistical data from the literature to evidence the decline in urban green spaces.

Line 73, “…, it often does NOT translate …” Not is missing.

Line 87 – 88, the authors claim that two studies have been done in Accra but they are narrow in scope. The authors should explain why those studies were narrow in scope, how their study will help fill those gaps.

Introduction, the authors need to provide a convincing justification for the choice of Accra for such a study. Note that the study could have been done in any of the cities in the country.

Lines 107 – 111, the authors should provide a scientific justification with literature evidence to support the classification of population density and income levels of districts. What does the researchers mean by high-income neighbourhoods and how does it translate into income levels?

Lines 116 – 127, when was the data collected?, what data was collected? What were the background characteristics, e.g., age of the respondent, etc…?

Lines 121-123, given the sampling allocation procedure described in Supplementary Table 1, it is not correct to state that “…10 households were selected from the listed households…”. Rather say, 2000 households were selected, allocated proportionately to the number of households in each district.

Lines 121- 123, Describe the sampling procedure used to select 10 households from each EA, and how that leads to a selection of a representative sample for generalisability.

Lines 123-126, What was the relevance of interviewing two people from the same household since it introduces dependence and violates the assumption of statistical independence? Note that interviewing household members separately does not rule out the problem of statistical dependence, since household members have similar or same exposure to access to green space and other factors.

Lines 123-126, What criteria was used to select the second person from the household?

Line 125, the study conducted is quantitative in nature, however, the authors claim that a semi-structured instrument was used for data collection. How is this possible since semi-structured interview guides are used for qualitative studies?

Line 126, define GAMA before using the abbreviation.

Lines 132 – 141, there is potential high multicollinearity in the indicators and scores described. Summing to generate an overall score, high scores in one indicator has the potential to cancel out the scores for another indicator, for example, scoring 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8, also 3 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 8. In this case, using a method of differential weighting such as factor analysis circumvents this problem, and allocate weights due to variation (variances) in the responses. The authors should explain the robustness and limitations of the approach they adopted.

Lines 144 – 158, the authors should explain what NVDI is, what they were used to proxy in this study, with a justification and how the 2000, 2015 and 2020 data were linked to a study conducted in 2021/22?

Why were some of the contextual factors extracted at the district level and others at the community level?

Ethical consideration

The authors stated that verbal informed consent was obtained. They should indicate how it was documented and witnessed. If the study included minors, state how informed consent was obtained. State the date ethical clearance was obtained, the period of data collection, the clearance number to show proof that clearance was obtained before data collection.

Statistical analysis

• “Multivariable binary logistic regression adjusting for potential confounders…” This indicates that there were primary factors upon which the research focuses. Thus, clarify what the primary factors and confounders are.

• What is (are) the outcome variable(s) of interest? Clearly state and indicate how they were classified into 0 and 1 (binary).

• As indicated earlier, two respondents were sampled from each household. This introduces dependence in the data structure which results in a more complex error structure than in a standard ordinary least squares model. When a standard ordinary least squares model is fitted in such case, it could result in biased standard errors, thus affect the model outcome. Explain how nesting within households was accounted for in this analysis. Could adopt multilevel (mixed effects) modelling approaches.

Results

• Tables 3 should rather focus on the main outcome (dependent) variables used for the multivariable analyses to give clarity. Table 5 should focus on the independent variables, classified into primary factors and confounders. Tables 3, 4, 5,.. do not add much to achieving the objectives of the study but rather complicates the story, particularly with the varying and low sample sizes in some cases. Also, those indicators presented in Tables 3, 4 and 5 but are not used in the main (multivariable) analysis should also be excluded. They provide some detail but do not add to achieving the objectives of the paper.

• Some of the variables, e.g., NDVI, population density, etc… were employed as contextual factors but the level at which these were link to the individual data for analysis are not explained.

• Interpretation of odds ratios

o the authors should be specific of what the odds are. For example, rounding 4.53 to 5 is not appropriate since the difference of the effects could be substantial.

o Odds should be interpret as odds, for example, females have higher odds of 4.53 of using green space when compared to males.

o The authors should explain the difference between odds ratios, adjusted odds ratios and crude odds ratios and use them consistently.

• Tables 6, 7 and 8 the authors should use stars (*) to indicate the level of significance to provide clarity on which categories significantly different from others.

• Was the analysis presented in Tables 7 and 8 conducted separately? If yes, then that is appropriate. The socio-demographic factors and neighbourhood factors do not influence green space development independently. For example, persons with higher education maybe more likely to reside in high-income and greener neighbourhoods thus influencing their development of green space. As indicated earlier, the neighbourhood (contextual) factors should be linked to the individual data and the analysis conducted and presented in one table.

• Also, account for the contextual factors in the analysis for use of green space.

• Why are the adjusted odds ratios for population density, income level of district and neighbourhood greenness not reported. Were they statistically insignificant? Please, clarify.

• Lines 388-428, the discussions are missed placed. You do not conduct the analysis before you discuss or describe the variables. You discuss the variables in the data section before you conduct the analysis using the variables.

• Validity issues – these should be discussed in the data section not discussion of the results.

Discussion – Synthesis with previous knowledge

Some sections of the discussion re-present the findings. The focus of the discussions should be on the synthesis and new knowledge.

Lines 545-548, the attribution made by the authors could not be correct. In the context of Ghana, persons of higher education may be engaged in activities that limiting the time to access green space but not that they are not aware of the benefits of green space as claimed by the authors. In this regard, it is important that the authors use literature evidence to attribute their findings

The authors do not use any literature evidence to support or dispute the discussion in the last three paragraphs but just present the results. It is strongly recommended that the discussions focuses on the main findings and literature evidence are used to support the findings. In this regard, the discussions could be shortened.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Fabian Sebastian Achana

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Report.docx

Socio-demographic and neighbourhood factors influencing urban green space use and development at home: A population-based survey in Accra, Ghana

PONE-D-22-22097R1

Dear Dr. Amegah,

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,

Jing Cheng

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 #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: the work should contain a flowchart explain the steps of the work in the methods section.

the work should contain a flowchart explain the steps of the work in the methods section.

Reviewer #4: I commend the authors for effectively addressing my comment, demonstrating their dedication and responsiveness to feedback.

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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 #3: Yes: Mohamed A. E. AbdelRahman

Reviewer #4: No

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