Community responses to a novel house design: A qualitative study of “Star Homes” in Mtwara, southeastern Tanzania

Salum Mshamu; Judith Meta; Bipin Adhikari; Salma Halifa; Arnold Mmbando; Hannah Sloan Wood; Otis Sloan Wood; Thomas Chevalier Bøjstrup; Nicholas P. J. Day; Steven W. Lindsay; Jakob Knudsen; Jacqueline Deen; Lorenz von Seidlein; Christopher Pell

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0309518

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 15, 2024
14 May 2024 Decision Letter - Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Editor PONE-D-24-05994Community responses to a novel house design: a qualitative study of “Star homes” in Mtwara, southeastern TanzaniaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Adhikari, 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 Jun 28 2024 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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If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. 5. Please upload a copy of Supplementary File 1, Supplementary File 2 and Supplementary File 3 to which you refer in your text on page 22. Please amend the file type to 'Supporting Information'. If the Supplementary file is no longer to be included as part of the submission please remove all reference to it within the text. Additional Editor Comments: Please briefly elaborate your argument about the possible link between your case as risk & the the mentioned diseases. If possible, following a theoretical framework may make sense of your findings. [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: N/A ****** 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: No 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: There are issues with how this article has been written, organised and structured, overall. I suggest going through PLOS ONE guidelines for structuring the article to begin with. - Introduction section is too loaded with the information about why novel houses are needed in the community. This section will be more balanced with maximum 2 short paragraphs on their relevance in preventing mentioned diseases, and the rest on how in other similar contexts communities have responded to living in tailored houses. -The sub sections in the Methods section needs to be titled respectively as Study Setting, Sampling, Data Collection, Data Management and Analysis and Ethical Considerations. The sub-section, Study Design seems an unnecessary addition. The description of who did what can easily fit into the suggested subtopics. Also, mentioning names of architect firms with their links in the bracket looked amateurish to me. - I suggest not to provide an overview of Results and directly get to the point. The Overview anyway presents a description of collected data, which should fit into the Data Collection section. - Illustration of case studies looked abrupt to me, as the article did not mention anywhere that individual cases were studied, and even if it had, there needed to be clear mentioning of sampling procedure for the selection of those cases. - In some instances, the result section jumps to conclusion without formulating proper argument to back it up. Result section should not present any discussion or conclusion. For e.g, p17: "Some respondents reported neighbors made comments that the Star Home residents were living on aid and made negative comments such as the houses were only for Christians. Such comments were manifestations of jealousies." To assert someone's opinion as jealousy is not a very academic way of sharing findings. Authors could have said (if applicable), "Respondents said they sensed jealousy in their neighbor's comments", and back it up with a quote. Further, I would avoid discussing Jealousy as one of the topics in the Discussion. Please rephrase it as something similar to "Unfavorable comments from the neighbors". The neighborhood not getting Star Houses could have (reasonably) triggered certain reactions but labeling them as jealous people makes the findings look biased. Reviewer #2: • Please explain how "Star Home" protects its residents from malaria, ARIs, and diarrheal infections. • Mention the criteria for recruiting respondents. • Figure 2 is unclear; please provide a clearer figure. ****** 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: Yes: Bibhu Thapaliya Reviewer #2: No ******** [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.0309518.r001
Revision 1
18 Jun 2024 Author Response 3rd June 2024 Dear Prof. Yitagesu Habtu Aweke and reviewers, Thank you very much for your comments/suggestions and opportunity to revise our work. We have utilized your suggestions to improve our manuscript. Please see below our responses to your specific suggestions with corresponding changes in the manuscript. We look forward to your kind consideration. On behalf of all the authors, Bipin Adhikari COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS Journal Requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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. AUTHORS: Thank you for the style guidelines. We have followed the style guidelines in our revision. 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: [This study was funded by Hanako foundation, Singapore.]. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: ""The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."" If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. Revised as suggested. 3. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. 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. Before we proceed with your manuscript, 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 identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). 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 to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. Data is available upon request to MORU’s data access committee. We have added the email address, and the revised statement reads as follows: Because of the nature of the qualitative data in this study, even if the data are anonymized, potential respondents are identifiable. Both MORU and local ethics committee restricts the sharing of data that can potentially identify the respondents. Nonetheless, the data is available upon request to the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit Data Access Committee (datasharing@tropmedres.ac) complying with the data access policy on case-by-case analysis (https://www.tropmedres.ac/units/moru-bangkok/bioethics-engagement/data-sharing/moru-tropical-network-policy-on-sharing-data-and-other-outputs). 4. We note that Figure(s) 1 and 3 in your submission contain copyrighted images. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure(s) 1 and 3 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an ""Other"" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” [ b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We have replaced figure 1 (the revised figure does not have identifiable individuals) and for figure 3, we have collected consent from the individual shown in the photograph. 5. Please upload a copy of Supplementary File 1, Supplementary File 2 and Supplementary File 3 to which you refer in your text on page 22. Please amend the file type to 'Supporting Information'. If the Supplementary file is no longer to be included as part of the submission please remove all reference to it within the text. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We have revised based on the PLoS One formatting guidelines https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf Additional Editor Comments: Please briefly elaborate your argument about the possible link between your case as risk & the mentioned diseases. If possible, following a theoretical framework may make sense of your findings. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. Our study is an exploration of experience of living in Star Homes and we used a descriptive qualitative method to explore their everyday interactions with the parts of the house, spaces, and changes in social dynamics brought by the interventions. In the sixth paragraph in introduction section, we have outlined how our primary study is to evaluate the impact of through randomized controlled trial comparing the incidence of the three diseases (malaria, ARIs, and diarrheal diseases) in children under 13 years living in Star Homes compared with traditional wattle-daub houses. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer #1: There are issues with how this article has been written, organised and structured, overall. I suggest going through PLOS ONE guidelines for structuring the article to begin with. - Introduction section is too loaded with the information about why novel houses are needed in the community. This section will be more balanced with maximum 2 short paragraphs on their relevance in preventing mentioned diseases, and the rest on how in other similar contexts communities have responded to living in tailored houses. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We agree with your suggestion. We broadly followed PLoS One’s instruction for authors’ guideline for manuscript organization. We agree that ‘introduction’ section looks loaded with multiple paragraphs. As you are aware that the study intervention has multi-pronged impacts (multi-disciplinary dimensions, impacts on health conditions, living space, social dynamics and feasibility), we wanted to include an overarching background and rationale in the ‘introduction’ section to consolidate our focus on the main intervention that is on infectious diseases, and forge how our current manuscript aligns with the main aim by exploring the experience of living in the star homes. -The sub sections in the Methods section needs to be titled respectively as Study Setting, Sampling, Data Collection, Data Management and Analysis and Ethical Considerations. The sub-section, Study Design seems an unnecessary addition. The description of who did what can easily fit into the suggested subtopics. Also, mentioning names of architect firms with their links in the bracket looked amateurish to me. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We agree with your suggestion. We have revised the order of respective sections and the content. As you may be aware that there is heterogeneity in organizations of titles within the published articles, we have incorporated your suggestion that best suits our manuscript. With the ‘Study design’ as a sub-topic within the materials and methods, we request reviewer to consider our following justification. We would like to retain a broader overview of our study in terms of how it is organized. Although the design and overview could be inserted into other sub-sections, having it clearly labelled and described it may serve the reader a quick glance of the study’s overarching methodology. Regarding mentioning the name of architect firm with their links; although broadly applicable, given their critical role in designing the Star Homes, and following the tradition how architectural firms are required to be explicitly reported, we included the name and the link within the manuscript. In the prior publication as well, we have reported in a similar format [1]. - I suggest not to provide an overview of Results and directly get to the point. The Overview anyway presents a description of collected data, which should fit into the Data Collection section. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We have revised and added the relevant content under the ‘Data collection’ section. - Illustration of case studies looked abrupt to me, as the article did not mention anywhere that individual cases were studied, and even if it had, there needed to be clear mentioning of sampling procedure for the selection of those cases. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We have revised the section ‘sampling’ to add how we have selected these four Star Homes cases in this study. The revised section has additional statements to clarify this and reads as follows: The interviews were followed by observations and informal interactions with a total of four Star Homes to document the diverse spectrum of experience of living in the Star Homes. These four Star Homes were purposively selected based on the distinctive issues and problems faced by the residents. - In some instances, the result section jumps to conclusion without formulating proper argument to back it up. Result section should not present any discussion or conclusion. For e.g, p17: “Some respondents reported neighbors made comments that the Star Home residents were living on aid and made negative comments such as the houses were only for Christians. Such comments were manifestations of jealousies.” To assert someone’s opinion as jealousy is not a very academic way of sharing findings. Authors could have said (if applicable), “Respondents said they sensed jealousy in their neighbor's comments", and back it up with a quote. further, I should avoid discussing Jealousy as one of the topics in the Discussion. Please rephrase it as something similar to “Unfavorable comments from the neighbors”. The neighborhood not getting Star Houses could have (reasonably) triggered certain reactions but labeling them as jealous people makes the findings look biased. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We agree with you, that we asserted them as manifestation of jealousy, although such manifestations are often the envy rather than jealousy, they have been widespread and common in such interventions including randomized clinical trials [2-6]. We have revised the statement and have removed our statement (‘such comments were manifestations of jealousies) that looked assertive. Re-adding the quotes, comments and feedback implying envy were often found during our semi-structured interviews (the first conversation under ‘response of the wider community’), observational field notes, including case studies. For instance, case study-I and IV have such comments and expressions that alluded towards the envy, so we attempted to avoid the redundancy by adding additional quotes. Regarding jealousy as a major theme in ‘discussion’ section, we are very thankful to you for raising this, as it allowed us to reflect on it more and explore more literature around it. We have revised the section as ‘envy’ and please consider our justification bellow: First, envy is one of the commonest theme in the literature on how selective participation in research and interventions creates division. Second, envy in our research intervention is an inductively derived theme thus we wanted to retain it. Previous literature have identified such themes (both envy and jealousy) and have presented in their findings as well [2-6]. Third, ‘envy’ in our research intervention has been identified during our iterative data analysis and has been a prominent finding during our longitudinal data collection phases. Fourth, we are aware of the connotations borne by the word ‘envy’ (and jealousy)[7], and our position in this study is not to label the non-participants negatively as envious but authentically reporting it as it emerged from our data. As you may be aware that envy has a positive connotation too; that is desiring to achieve something or desiring to receive a tempting incentive. In addition, ‘envy’ is a natural pan-human attribute/manifestation[7] when select of community members receive an intervention (Star Home is a major incentive or receiving health services attached to participating in a clinical trial) which is irresistible. Reviewer #2: • Please explain how "Star Home" protects its residents from malaria, ARIs, and diarrheal infections. AUTHORS: Thank you for raising this question. This is also our main research question related to our intervention: Star Homes, and we do not yet have data to report. We have revised a statement in the manuscript within the sub-section ‘Internal and external spaces’ within Discussion that reads as follows: Such research can potentially contribute to explaining the impact (or lack thereof) of housing interventions on health outcomes such as malaria, respiratory tract infections and diarrheal diseases and is currently being evaluated by the clinical study [8, 9]. • Mention the criteria for recruiting respondents. AUTHORS: Thank you for the suggestion. We have revised how we recruited the respondents in this study under the revised heading ‘sampling’ within ‘materials and methods’ section that reads as follows: Residents of Star Homes and traditional homes were recruited for the current qualitative study because of issues they had reported to the researc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309518.r002
7 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Editor PONE-D-24-05994R1Community responses to a novel house design: a qualitative study of “Star homes” in Mtwara, southeastern TanzaniaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Adhikari, 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 Aug 21 2024 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, Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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: Could you please address “steps to maintaining rigors of the study” so that scientific rigors in our journal may be achieved? I have some concerns specifically on methodological rigors such as: It seems that adequate study participants were participated in both IDIs and FGDs, but supporting quotes in each theme are very few, I could say, not more than 1 for majority of your themes. In this instance, the most important rigor criteria of “think descriptions” seems to be affected. Could you please attach at least sample of participants’ quotations supporting your key findings in each them in the form of at least a “supplementary files”? Could you show how you maintain methodological rigors, and where you put findings in each theme? 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 #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 #1: No ****** 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 #1: 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 #1: (No Response) ****** 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 #1: No ******** [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.0309518.r003
Revision 2
13 Jul 2024 Author Response 10th July 2024 Dear Prof. Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Thank you very much for your suggestion and opportunity to revise our work. We have utilized your suggestions to improve our manuscript. Please see below our responses to your specific suggestions with corresponding changes in the manuscript. We look forward to your kind consideration. On behalf of all the authors, Bipin Adhikari Additional Editor Comments: Could you please address “steps to maintaining rigors of the study” so that scientific rigors in our journal may be achieved? I have some concerns specifically on methodological rigors such as: • It seems that adequate study participants were participated in both IDIs and FGDs, but supporting quotes in each theme are very few, I could say, not more than 1 for majority of your themes. In this instance, the most important rigor criteria of “think descriptions” seems to be affected. Could you please attach at least sample of participants’ quotations supporting your key findings in each them in the form of at least a “supplementary files”? AUTHORS: Thank you for your evaluation and useful feedback. In the manuscript, we tried to present as succinctly as possible to ensure that we also accommodate four case studies that offer thick description on living experience (social and cultural context) in Star Homes. Following your suggestion, we have also added a sample of participants’ conversations containing quotations (from our latest data collection phase) supporting the key findings and are presented in a supplementary file 3. • Could you show how you maintain methodological rigors, and where you put findings in each theme? AUTHORS: Thank you for the question. Aligned with your question/suggestion above, we have presented codebook, sunburst visualization of coding landscape and supporting quotes for themes included in the manuscript in the supplementary file 3. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309518.r004
17 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Editor PONE-D-24-05994R2Community responses to a novel house design: a qualitative study of “Star homes” in Mtwara, southeastern TanzaniaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Adhikari, 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. Indicate which changes you require for acceptance versus which changes you recommend Address any conflicts between the reviews so that it's clear which advice the authors should follow Provide specific feedback from your evaluation of the manuscript 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, Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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: Could you please summarize supplementary file 3 in the form of single table containing column labels as ' "Codes", "Themes", "sample quotes" ' ? Not the full transcriptions and full codebook" [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.0309518.r005
Revision 3
25 Jul 2024 Author Response 18th July 2024 Dear Prof. Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Thank you very much for your specific and clear suggestion and opportunity to revise our work. We have followed your suggestions to revise the supplementary Table. Please see below our responses to your specific suggestions with corresponding changes in the manuscript. We look forward to your kind consideration. On behalf of all the authors, Bipin Adhikari Additional Editor Comments: • Could you please summarize supplementary file 3 in the form of single table containing column labels as ' "Codes", "Themes", "sample quotes" ' ? Not the full transcriptions and full codebook" AUTHORS: Thank you for your specific suggestion. We have prepared the supplementary Table 3 based on your specific suggestions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: RESPONSE TO EDITORS COMMENTS.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309518.r006
15 Aug 2024 Decision Letter - Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Editor Community responses to a novel house design: a qualitative study of “Star homes” in Mtwara, southeastern Tanzania PONE-D-24-05994R3 Dear Dr. Bipin Adhikari, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309518.r007
Formally Accepted
19 Aug 2024 Acceptance Letter - Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Editor PONE-D-24-05994R3 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Adhikari, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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 PhD Candidate Yitagesu Habtu Aweke Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309518.r008

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