PONE-D-23-31840Household food insecurity and its association with academic performance among primary school adolescents in Hargeisa City, SomalilandPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Adam,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to edit this manuscript. After the peer review, I realized that several modifications to the manuscript will be necessary in order to consider it for publication. I would like you to consider the reviewers' suggestions and questions and resubmit the manuscript after the modifications.

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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: No

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: 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

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 aim of this manuscript was to assess the effect of household food insecurity on adolescents’ academic performance in Hargeisa, Somaliland. This is an interesting topic, but several aspects of the text need to be improved.

Comments

I recommend that a native speaker of English proofread the text. This will help a lot with sentence construction and improve the flow of the text. I also recommend reading the instructions for authors on the journal's formatting rules.

Methods

The results of the PCA should be presented in a supplementary material file.

You describe only the Academic performance and Household food insecurity variables. What about the other variables used in the study? For example, all the variables shown in Tables 1 and 2 should be included in the methodology and their classifications described.

Results

Include the sample number of your study and the year of collection in the tables and figures headings so that the table is complete and can be read independently of the text.

It would be interesting to present the descriptive results also stratified by academic performance (Tables 1, 2 and 3).

The main points of the tables have yet to be highlighted.

The pictures are of poor quality.

In the methods, you say that you have dichotomized the academic performance variable into good and poor, but in Figure 2 you present three categories. Standardize this.

Pay attention to the maximum number of tables and figures allowed by the journal.

Are all the variables, tables, and figures essential for your article? I suggest reviewing the data presented, as much information is not described in the methodology and variables other than those mentioned in the objective. Making the text more direct, informative, and concise would be best.

Discussion

In the discussion, you should focus on discussing the results you found, bringing in a bit of the context of the city and population evaluated, and not just comparing them with the results of other studies.

In addition, you should bring up the implications of the results. Where is the proper reflection on these results? What can the government do to improve this?

The limitations should be included in the discussion session. I also recommend presenting the strengths of the study.

The second paragraph of the conclusion should be better worked into the discussion. Including regional aspects, what already exists in Hargeisa that can help in this scenario?

Reviewer #2: Dear authors, the study presents important results for understanding the impact of food insecurity on academic performance and has significant implications for public health. However, there are some points that can be improved. The suggestions below aim to further improve the quality and impact of the article.

Methods:

Sample: The exclusion of private schools from the sample must be justified. In the methods section of the article, the author should clearly explain why they decided to exclude private schools.

In the “Sample size and sampling procedure” session, it was not clear why we chose to work with students whose performance is 50%. I suggest requires a clearer explanation of these selection criteria.

Describe what the acronym COR means in the section “Data processing analysis and analysis processing procedures”

The results included data on the adolescents' lifestyle habits, information related to basic sanitation and hygiene, as well as data on other family members. However, this information was not presented in the methods. It is important to include a comprehensive description of these aspects in the methods, ensuring consistency in the presentation of methodological procedures and allowing a more complete understanding of the approach adopted.

Results:

In the method, the authors chose to categorize data related to food security and insecurity in a dichotomous way. However, the results show the presentation of both this categorization and the previous categories. I recommend that authors clearly establish which categories will be used consistently throughout the study: whether they will be Food security and Food insecurity, or whether a more detailed approach will be applied, classifying into Food security, Mild food insecurity, Moderate food insecurity and Severe food insecurity, providing greater clarity and uniformity in the analysis and interpretation of data.

Statistical analyzes were carried out to investigate the association between food insecurity, academic performance and the data presented in the categories “Adolescent illness and factors related to food” “Factors related to adolescent lifestyle” “Environmental sanitation and factors related to hygiene”? It is unclear how the descriptive analysis of these data, as presented in the article, contributes to the study. I suggest considering excluding these data from the survey or, alternatively, providing statistical analyzes that demonstrate the relationship (or lack of relationship) between these factors and food insecurity and academic performance. This review may enhance the relevance and impact of the findings in the study.

The excerpt below is part of the methods, I suggest describing our methods and extracting the results.

“Bivariate analysis was performed to select candidate variables for multivariate regression analysis at P≤0.25. Thus, food security status, birth order, head of household, maternal education, paternal education, family wealth index, habitual breakfast intake, daily meal frequency, school absenteeism, home study duration, screen time, and practice of washing hands after using the bathroom were selected as candidate variables.”

Discussion:

Based on the results of the study, it is essential to enrich the discussion by incorporating some unaddressed points, which could add depth to the understanding of the topic. Suggest including in the discussion:

- The importance and central role of the school in ensuring food security for students, taking into account that this is the environment where children eat most of their meals.

- A more in-depth analysis of the results, including data on the family, the influence of maternal education and the dynamics of female-headed households in relation to food security.

- A more detailed analysis of food consumption is recommended in the discussion, considering that this indicator plays a fundamental role in the assessment of food security. Note a limited approach to the discussion of food consumption, with only one paragraph dedicated to the debate about breakfast. Expanding the discussion to cover different aspects of food consumption would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of students' eating habits.

Describe the limitations as a discussion paragraph and add the strengths of the study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Nayhanne Gomes Cordeiro

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Household food insecurity and its association with academic performance among primary school adolescents in Hargeisa City, Somaliland

PONE-D-23-31840R1

Dear Dr. Adam,

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,

Larissa Loures Mendes, 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 #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

**********

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

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #4: (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 #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes: Nayhanne Gomes Cordeiro

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