Latrine utilization and associated factors among districts implementing and not-implementing community-led total sanitation and hygiene in East Wollega, Western Ethiopia: A comparative cross-sectional study

Adisu Tafari Shama; Dufera Rikitu Terefa; Edosa Tesfaye Geta; Melese Chego Cheme; Bayise Biru; Jira Wakoya Feyisa; Matiyos Lema; Adisu Ewunetu Desisa; Bikila Regassa Feyisa; Dejene Seyoum Gebre

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288444

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 11, 2023
26 May 2023 Decision Letter - Mohammed Hasen Badeso, Editor PONE-D-23-00656Latrine Utilization and Associated Factors Among Districts Implementing and Not-Implementing Community-Led Total Sanitation and Hygiene in East Wollega, Western Ethiopia: A Comparative Cross-Sectional StudyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shama, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 10 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. 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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. 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. 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Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. 4. We note that you have referenced (WSP (Water safety plan). Desk review on Economics of Sanitation (ESI) for Ethiopia. 2015; unpublished.]) which has currently not yet been accepted for publication. Please remove this from your References and amend this to state in the body of your manuscript: as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style " Additional Editor Comments: Dear Author(s), Thank for submission your manuscript to PLOS ONE journal. The peer review process for your manuscript is now completed. We would be grateful if you could address the reviewers comments in a revised manuscript and provide point-by-point response to the concerns raised. In addition, ensure that your revised manuscript conforms to the journal style available in the journal instructions for authors. It is important that your files are correctly formatted. [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. 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 manuscript had tried to insight a good topic and I would like to appreciate the authors. However, I have some comments and questions. Abstract Comment 1: you didn’t provide a good justification to conduct the study under the background. Comment 2: the result is not written in concise and clear manner as well very congested and doesn’t attract the reader. Background Comment 1: in the last paragraph of the background you had tried to justify the need for the study and tried to show some strengths of the study. In the paragraph you have mentioned that other studies didn’t investigate safely managed services and this study fills the gap. However, in this study nothing has been showed in the methods (especially operational definition) and result (Latrine coverage by sanitation ladder) about safely managed services. So, you better exclude this justification otherwise include the above comments in your methods and result part. Methods and materials Comment 1: for the qualitative study you planned and executed thematic analysis. However your result didn’t show that and the qualitative result is not presented in a good manner. As well the discussion doesn’t incorporate findings from the qualitative study. By the way, it is better to exclude the qualitative study whole, if not so try to read and read about triangulation and thematic analysis and come up with an organized result and discussion. Comment 2: there is no need to have these paragraphs in the operational definition “The use of the latrine was assessed based on self-reporting, and the observation of proxy indicators. Accordingly” and “Finally, the household was categorized as utilized or not utilized based on the above definition” Comment 3: as per the operational definition Latrine utilization is measured among households having an improved toilet. So what are improved latrines/toilets? ; operationalize the facilities and try to show the reader how many of the households own improved toilets in your manuscript clearly. Furthermore what is a functional toilet? This also needs to be operationalized. Comment 4: Result Comment 1: almost all the tables are distorted and poorly organized; this needs to be clearly addressed. Comment 2: what is the purpose of having this much category of age groups? I think you better categorize age not more than 4 or 5 age groups. Comment 3: line 278 to 280, what is Squat hole cover? ; What you are talking about is a slab not a squat hole cover. Comment4: line 290 water, sanitation and hygiene focal person better be “WaSH focal person” Comment 5: for the qualitative study, all the second person paragraphs or ideas better be italic and should be placed separately. Comment 6: line 297 and 302, A 34 what? How Comment 7: the variable distance from the kebele. How near is near and how far is far? This should have to be operationalize. Comment 8: what does the variable frequency of latrine construction means? Comment 9: the quantitative data focuses on latrine utilization and the qualitative result showed about issues other than that. Therefore as I tried to mention earlier it would be better to exclude from the manuscript. Discussion Comment 1: generally almost all your justifications are not supported by evidences from other literatures. You just forward your personal opinion all over the discussion. So please try to read and incorporate other literatures. Reviewer #2: The manuscript was well written and only have minor comments. The problem is stated clearly, and the result written in well manner. There was not too much grammatical error in the manuscript and all data incorporated in the result part. ****** 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: Dinku Mekbib ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-00656_reviewer.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288444.r001
Revision 1
11 Jun 2023 Author Response Authors’ point-by-point response to the editor and Reviewers comments First, the authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers for reviewing our manuscript and providing us the constructive comments that help us to enrich the document. We tried to address all the comments and made necessary modifications and clarifications based on the comments and suggestions provided. Comments by 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. We opened those links and checked the alignment of our manuscript with the formats and styles required. 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. The data set is uploaded 3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. Accepted. 4. We note that you have referenced (WSP (Water safety plan). Desk review on Economics of Sanitation (ESI) for Ethiopia. 2015; unpublished.]) which has currently not yet been accepted for publication. Please remove this from your References and amend this to state in the body of your manuscript: as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style " Corrected 5. Review Comments to the Author Abstract Comment 1: you didn’t provide a good justification to conduct the study under the background. Amended in this revised manuscript. Comment 2: the result is not written in concise and clear manner as well very congested and doesn’t attract the reader. Amended. Background Comment 1: in the last paragraph of the background you had tried to justify the need for the study and tried to show some strengths of the study. In the paragraph you have mentioned that other studies didn’t investigate safely managed services and this study fills the gap. However, in this study nothing has been showed in the methods (especially operational definition) and result (Latrine coverage by sanitation ladder) about safely managed services. So, you better exclude this justification otherwise include the above comments in your methods and result part. We accepted this suggestion and removed the description about ‘safely managed services’ from the manuscript. Methods and materials Comment 1: for the qualitative study you planned and executed thematic analysis. However your result didn’t show that and the qualitative result is not presented in a good manner. As well the discussion doesn’t incorporate findings from the qualitative study. By the way, it is better to exclude the qualitative study whole, if not so try to read and read about triangulation and thematic analysis and come up with an organized result and discussion. We accepted this and removed the qualitative part. Comment 2: there is no need to have these paragraphs in the operational definition “The use of the latrine was assessed based on self-reporting, and the observation of proxy indicators. Accordingly” and “Finally, the household was categorized as utilized or not utilized based on the above definition” Amended. Comment 3: as per the operational definition Latrine utilization is measured among households having an improved toilet. So what are improved latrines/toilets? ; operationalize the facilities and try to show the reader how many of the households own improved toilets in your manuscript clearly. Furthermore what is a functional toilet? This also needs to be operationalized. Accepted and operationalized in this revised manuscript.. Comment 4: Result Comment 1: almost all the tables are distorted and poorly organized; this needs to be clearly addressed. The tables are modified Comment 2: what is the purpose of having this much category of age groups? I think you better categorize age not more than 4 or 5 age groups. We recategorized the age based on the reviewer’s suggestion. Comment 3: line 278 to 280, what is Squat hole cover? ; What you are talking about is a slab not a squat hole cover. Thank you. We corrected the variable as “presence of slabs for the latrine” Comment4: line 290 water, sanitation and hygiene focal person better be “WaSH focal person” Comment 5: for the qualitative study, all the second person paragraphs or ideas better be italic and should be placed separately. These comments were addressed as we already removed the qualitative part from this manuscript. Comment 6: line 297 and 302, A 34 what? How Comment 7: the variable distance from the kebele. How near is near and how far is far? This should have to be operationalize. Thank you! We specified this as near if walking distance of <30 minutes, medium (30-60 minutes), and too far (>60 minutes). Comment 8: what does the variable frequency of latrine construction means? We tried to make this variable clear by modifying as “number of times latrines constructed since household establishment” Comment 9: the quantitative data focuses on latrine utilization and the qualitative result showed about issues other than that. Therefore as I tried to mention earlier it would be better to exclude from the manuscript. We accepted this comment. Discussion Comment 1: generally almost all your justifications are not supported by evidences from other literatures. You just forward your personal opinion all over the discussion. So please try to read and incorporate other literatures. We accepted this comment, modified the discussion and supported our justification by references. Reviewer #2: The manuscript was well written and only have minor comments. The problem is stated clearly, and the result written in well manner. There was not too much grammatical error in the manuscript and all data incorporated in the result part. Thank you! I hope those minor comments have been addressed in this revised version. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Responses to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288444.r002
28 Jun 2023 Decision Letter - Mohammed Hasen Badeso, Editor Latrine Utilization and Associated Factors Among Districts Implementing and Not-Implementing Community-Led Total Sanitation and Hygiene in East Wollega, Western Ethiopia: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study PONE-D-23-00656R1 Dear Author(s), 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, Mohammed Hasen Badeso, MPH in Field Epidemiology Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288444.r003
Formally Accepted
3 Jul 2023 Acceptance Letter - Mohammed Hasen Badeso, Editor PONE-D-23-00656R1 Latrine utilization and associated factors among districts implementing and not-implementing community-led total sanitation and hygiene in East Wollega, Western Ethiopia: A comparative cross-sectional study Dear Dr. Shama: 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 Mr Mohammed Hasen Badeso Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288444.r004

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