PONE-D-22-10071Geographic weighted regression analysis of hotspots of modern contraceptive utilization and its associated factors in Ethiopia

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chekol,

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Your manuscript has been assessed by one peer-reviewer and their report is appended below. 

 The reviewer comments that your methodology section requires further clarification and that your tables should report confidence intervals in the percentage column. In addition, the reviewer comments that the discussion second of your study requires more information, and the conclusions need to be reported better. 

 In addition to the reviewer's comments, it has come to the editorial office's attention that there appear to be a lot of grammar, spelling, and typological errors in your manuscript. For example, the abstract reads "Therefore, the this study aimed to investigate" as well as "public health interventions targeting colds pot areas of modern contraceptive considering rural residents". Please make sure to carefully review the writing of the manuscript. 

 Furthermore, it has come to the editorial office's attention that in Editorial Manager, the submission details of your manuscript only list one author, whereas your title page suggests 6 authors contributed to this article. Please make sure that you register each author on your manuscript correctly. Please note that the journal will follow up with each author individually to confirm that they know of, and consent to the submission of this manuscript. 

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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: 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: Reviewer report

Introduction

Line 118-123… it could be good if this paragraph shows what are the gaps in the literature and what would this research is intended to address.

Methods

Line 151.. ‘…The study population was all Women who had any modern contraceptive in the five years…’ it is not clear; are you considered only those who had used contraceptive in the last five years?

The inclusion and exclusion criteria were not clear. Did you include or exclude sexually active women?

Line 197… what is the national median value?

Line 200… what are your bases to define Media exposure in such a way? it is the standard definition? If so, cite a reference

Line 240… one of the issues with GWR is multicollinearity, did the authors check multicollinearity?

Results

Table 1.. which religions are grouped under the ‘other’ category? Add confidence intervals for the percentage column.

What is the relevance of figure 3 as the values already available in table 2?

Figure 6 reported three confidence levels (90%, 95%, and 99%), I suggest using only one confidence level.

Line 400-415. I would suggest restating this paragraph as the authors used the one phrase ‘… there is negative relationship between proportion of…’ again and again.

Table 5… how did you define /measure the distance from the health facility? What does big problem and not problem mean?

Table 5… In EDHS there are five categories for wealth index. Why did you have 3 categories of wealth index?

Table 5. Why Tigray region selected as a reference?

Discussion

Line 525… “The highest modern contraceptive utilization was recorded in the Amhara region…”. This statement contradicts your result- contraceptive prevalence was higher in Oromia region (37%) than Amhara region (25%)

Line 507-511… “…. Other religion followers were found to be less likely to use modern contraceptive methods in Ethiopia. This result is consistent with other study done in Zambia[43]. The possible reason might be due to the fact that religion might have similar socio-cultural importance in influencing the life of women in Ethiopia. Especially, the introduction of some family planning teachings in religiously conservative societies might be disadvantageous……”.

This paragraph is not clear. Which religions were grouped under ‘other region followers’? Be cautious to compare these variables in Ethiopia with Zambia.

Conclusion

What is your basis to conclude the prevalence of modern contraceptives in Ethiopia was low?

It is not informative stating as a hotspot and cold spot, as these are not defined before.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-22-10071R1Geographic weighted regression analysis of hot spots of modern contraceptive utilization and its associated factors in Ethiopia: A geographic weighted regression analysis and multilevel robust Poisson regression analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chekol,

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 21 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.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Samuel Hailegebreal

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

reviewer #3

Thank you for allowing me to review this paper. The paper is addressed important public health topic. I have provided some question and comments as outlined below.

General question

1. What is the need of doing another research since there is a similar study done in Ethiopia?

2. What will it add to the already known facts?

3. What was the gap in the previous study?

4. Why you select multilevel robust Poisson analysis for this study?

General comment

I. Title: In the title you should remove the methods that you used

II. Introduction section: I would like to thank you, your introduction is very attractive and well written. While, it is better to include consequences of lack of modern contraceptive utilization.

III. Method section: it is too lengthy & try to summarized sentence especially, your method of analysis like spatial analysis part. What are the assumption that you have checked In OLS model? Please write shortly and state in method section.

IV. Result section: Dhs measure education as o education, primary, secondary, and higher. Why did you merge secondary ad higher? You could have merged it only if the distribution of one was extremely small, which is not the case. In addition, did you focus only on married women? If you did not, what about women who were single?

From line number 306-312 already reported in the hotspot analysis section, so please try to remove this paragraph

A beauty of this study is the large data and the multilevel analysis performed. However, you did not include in the background, the importance of the community factors that warranted a multilevel analysis. Overall, the discussion is shallow and is a repetition of the results. Furthermore, it needs some work on language.

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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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Proof read the whole document for better readability. Regarding, the model some variables like community level wealth index is total methodologically wrong and there is no community level wealth index. If possible check it again, what model has been used to aggregate individual level characteristics to area level.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: review.docx

Geographic weighted regression analysis of hot spots of modern contraceptive utilization and its associated factors in Ethiopia

PONE-D-22-10071R2

Dear Dr. Chekol,

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,

Samuel Hailegebreal

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

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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

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

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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

**********

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: Thank you, All my comments have been addressed.For the future work your method of analysis like spatial analysis part. Please write shortly and separated manner in method section

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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.

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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: No

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