PONE-D-24-27103Demographic, Socioeconomic and Regional Disparities in the Coverage of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Facilities in Four South Asian CountriesPLOS ONE

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: 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: The study found interesting and I enjoyed a lot on reviewing it. It can obviously contribute to those who are really keen on in cross-country study in WASH related themes in four Asian regions Bangledesh, Nepal, Pakistinn, and Afganistan.

I found merit in this article, however some revisions are required which are mentioned line by line in the below.

Good luck!

Abstract

1. Last sentence of background, author already spelled four South Asian countries name, thus no need to mention in this sentence. I prefer (The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data collecting from the corresponding four South Asian countries serve as data source for this study.)

2. Make consistency while using abbreviation and full form whether they should be sentence case or capitalize each word such as you wrote water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). In the similar case you spelled out Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). Please make consistency across the manuscript, Personally, I recommend second one.

3. Method section last line (Please verify this (Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the ROC curve (AUC).

4. The method section is not clear, it should cover methods, research design, sample, sampling procedure, and analysis strategies, including data collection date. For instance : the study applied quantitative/qualitative research method, and ……research design…. Further, it uses 3 types of analysis such as univariate, bivariate, and multivariate. For your reference you can review this article, but you are free to take an idea from any other documents.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/11786302221095030

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360175603_Effect_of_School_Water_Sanitation_and_Hygiene_on_Health_Status_Among_Basic_Level_Students'_in_Nepal

5. In the conclusion section, the sentence you have mention seems recommendation that’s fine, now please write one or two sentence as a conclusion just above the (To ensure the adequate WASH facilities, policymakers should focus on region-specific plans, providing subsidies for purchasing WASH equipment’s to the lower class of society, and conducting awareness campaigns to enhance WASH facilities in the four South Asian countries.

Title

1. Title should be "Demographic, Socioeconomic and Regional Disparities in the Coverage of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Facilities in Four South Asian Countries"

Introduction

1. Line 37, before writing abbreviation first write full form such as World Health Organization (WHO)/United Nations ……………(UNICEF) ..Then use only abbreviation throughout the manuscript.

2. Line 38, should be in-text citation such as ……………Ahmed et al. (2021) ………..

3. Line 41, should delete (.) before citation like …..health (United Nations, 2015).

4. Line 41 and 45, make United Nations (UN) in line 41 and use only UN in line 45 and throughout the manuscript. Apply this rule in other cases as well.

5. The introduction part is interesting, however it seems little bit lengthy thus, can you concise the introduction part only about 2 pages. Another thing is clearly state your objective of the study, how this study is different to the previous researchers, what is novelty of the study, in what ways this study findings can contribute nations and regions…..?

Methods

1. line 104 no need to write name of the Asian countries, which already mentioned in above sentence.

2. 105 and 106, no need this sentence (Figure 1 illustrates the specific datasets and their respective sample sizes used for this study.)

3. 119 use only WASH ……

4. Line 122 to 134, Regarding the (WHO/UNICEF, 2017) criteria, it is suggested to provide the JMP criteria fulfilled by selected countries for instance what was actually present in the selected countries and absent so that one can relate through findings -what facilities were suggested to be provided by the country. For example, did the improved countries had piped water as wells protected well.

The response might in this way, countries with improved WASH facilities and countries without improved WASH facilities are determined based on the guidelines provided by Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) (2018)'s guidelines. In doing so, Bangladesh found with piped water, tube well/boreholes, protected dug wells, separate toilets for urination and defecation, ventilated improved pit latrines, fixed or portable hand-washing facilities………………………..are considered improved WASH facilities. On the other hand, countries found with unprotected dug wells, unprotected springs surface water sources, the absence of single sex toilets, ………………………the absence of hand-washing facilities, ..are considered unimproved WASH facilities.

You can separately write country wise or combined way.

5. Line 163, adjusted odds ratio (aOR),

6. Line 169-175, should be in-text citation like Ihaka and Gentleman (1996), Please follow the APA citation properly.

7. Line 192, (Table 1) Times new roman and bold, delete (:), it should be

Table 1 Country-wise household level coverage of WASH components

Follow throughout the manuscript.

8. Please mentioned the sources below the table.

9. Line 207, please follow this, Figure 3 (Italic and bold) Country-wise household level coverage of WASH facilities (times new roman)

Like Figure 3 Country-wise household level coverage of WASH facilities

10. I think, It is not AOR, should be aOR across the maniscrupt.

11. Line 273, I would love this style ……adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR)=0.54; 95% Confidence Level (CI): 0.44 to 0.65; p<0.001) and 30% lower odds (aOR=0.70; 95% CI: 0.64 to 0.77; p<0.001) instead of …………..(AOR: 0.54 with 95% CI: 0.44, 0.65) and 30% lower odds (AOR: 0.70 with 95% CI: 0.64, 0.77) respectively……

12. One important suggestion is, do not explain each and every data in the table, you may explain most significant predictors, highlighted things only and indicate please see the (table 1/2 or figure 1/2).

13. line 336 to 341 is no essential which has already mentioned introduction or in methods section, If you want to keep it please transfer in the second last paragraph of the introduction.

14. Line 346 to 357 needs triangulate this study's finding with other previous findings whether they are similar or differ. You can support by your logic the causes of having similar or contrast findings between your study's finding and others.

15. I am unable to see proper discussion, please follow these strategies while writing discussion throughout.

1. You can add one more subthemes strengths and limitation of the study or you can manage in a paragraph just above the conclusion.

Conclusion

1. Line 395 to 400 (Despite several limitations, including based on secondary data, and potential recall bias due to data collected from household member responses, our study offers a general overview of the 397 WASH conditions in the four study nations: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan. There has been a minimal study on the household-level coverage of WASH facilities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal, despite some prior research on WASH being undertaken in Bangladesh. According to our findings) seems worthless please delete these or transfer into limitations section.

2. Rewrite conclusion section, in doing so, please sketch core findings from each table and figures then only write recommendation. In the current status of your conclusion, you just mentioned recommendation. FYI, you can generate more idea from this article 10.1002/wmh3.523

Reviewer #2: Title: Demographic, Socioeconomic and Regional Disparities in the Coverage of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Facilities in Four South Asian Countries

Authors: Md. Hasibul Islam Jitu & Mohammad Shahed Masud

Objective: The main objective of this study was to (i)review the existing WASH facilities, (ii) mapping for regional comparisons, and (iii)identify the significant socioeconomic and demographic factors associated with WASH facilities in four South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan.

The authors have tried to explore the situation of WASH facilities in four SAARC countries.

I have some observations on the paper and hope that this will add value to paper.

1. Abstract (Background): Add the MICS date right after the country in the bracket [such as Nepal (MICS 2019)]. Could you please present the names of countries in ascending (a to z) order, i.e., Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan, throughout the text? Please ensure discussion in that way. Abstract (Results): Add the value of a particular variable in the results so that the reader may understand the magnitude of the influence of variables.

2. Abstract (Conclusion): Suggest specific recommendations rather than general ones. How could policymakers use your finding into practice/intervention planning?

3. Follow the format and guidelines of PLoS One.

4. Did you get permission to use the datasets of MICS since you are going to publish them from concerned authorities?

5. In Methods: Covariates section, what is the logic for categorizing the age group <35, 35-54, and 54+, in ethnicity Bengali and others? Please present it in a logical order. For ethnicity, it may be indigenous, and others might be appropriate for all countries and categorize them accordingly. In the same way, how did you categorize poor, middle, and rich instead of five quintiles?

6. Ethical consideration: Please provide the date of ethical approval and the authority that provided the ethical clearance country-wise.

7. Please provide the date of the survey along with the country in brackets in all tables, such as Nepal (2019).

8. The authors have presented the exact description of the table. I would recommend presenting the impression of the table rather than the exact numeric value.

9. Did you assess the multi-collinearity issue before performing multivariate analysis?

10. Why and how did you claim that 'the model has quite well discriminating ability' and present it with logic and reference (citation)?

11. In the discussion session, I would recommend linking with theories related to WASH. Moreover, discuss with Sustainable WASH principles: technical, institutional, environmental, financial, and social sustainability of WASH.

12. Add the strengths and limitations of the study before the conclusion session.

13. Consult with recent and current literature.

14. Go through the text for grammar, language, and coherence.

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Mohan Kumar Sharma, PhD.

Reviewer #2: No

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Submitted filename: Comments.docx

Demographic, Socioeconomic and Regional Disparities in the Coverage of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Facilities in Four South Asian Countries

PONE-D-24-27103R1

Dear Dr. Md. Hasibul Islam Jitu,

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.

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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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: I appreciate such a academic task, authors have addressed all of my concerns and seems good to proceed. However, authors, have you missed speall keywords in this revised version.

Thank you and good luck.

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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Devaraj Acharya

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