PONE-D-23-42156Maternal mental health and early childhood development, nutritional status and common childhood illnesses in Khwisero subcounty, KenyaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Abajobir,

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Ammal Mokhtar Metwally, Ph.D (MD)

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The manuscript is interested meanwhile, the reviewers have raised a number of points which we believe would improve the manuscript and may allow a revised version to be published in PLOS one.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for submitting this important work. Please consider the following recommendations:

1. Please indicate the research question for the parent study so readers can evaluate the relationship between the studies.

2. If that question is related at all to the research question of this study, then you should explore participation in the intervention group as a potential confounder.

3. Demographic issues: participation by women under 18 is unusual. Indicate how many minors participated. Also, how many women serving as caretakers but not related to the child participated in this study? Could that be confounding the association?

4. Were the ECD scores assessed by age group? Otherwise, it is normal for older children to show more advanced development than younger children. It doesn't make sense to analyze such a large age range (8-60 months) together using the same ECD measures for all of them. What you want to know is, is each child developmentally appropriate for their age. I don't see this info in the supplemental information.

5. Please include tables in the supplementary materials for all results reported for which you note, "Table not shown."

6. Methods: Typically, the effect measure for cross-sectional studies is a POR. It would be better / more useful to report and interpret the effect measures rather than simply report the beta coefficients.

7. Results section: In the third line, you say "for both groups." But this study has just one group.

8. Please report the possible ranges for all scores reported (perhaps when you describe the measures in the Methods section) because the reader cannot evaluate whether reported means are high or low, or otherwise clinically important.

9. Please rewrite the first paragraph of the Discussion to restate the main findings of the study and its significance. Then move into comparisons to other studies.

10. I'd like to see more discussion about why there were unexpected findings.

11. Please check the manuscript for correct English grammar, e.g., see the first sentence under "Confounders."

Reviewer #2: Overall a sound and thorough research paper with robust statistical conclusions.

Additionally, the history of childhood vaccinations recommended for first 2 years of life and maternal tetanus vaccinations that are given during or before pregnancy could have also been included as covariates.

Moreover, since this is a cross sectional study, instead of reporting B coefficients of logistic regression, Prevalence Odds ratios (POR) along with their confidence intervals and p values should be reported.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Ammar Ali Muhammad

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Association between maternal mental health and early childhood development, nutrition, and common childhood illnesses in Khwisero subcounty, Kenya

PONE-D-23-42156R1

Dear Dr. Abajobir,

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,

Ammal Mokhtar Metwally, Ph.D (MD)

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 #2: 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 #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: 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: No

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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

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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: (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 #2: No

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