PONE-D-20-28765

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 pandemic) in Nigeria: Multi-institutional survey of knowledge, practices and perception amongst undergraduate veterinary medical students”

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Adebowale,

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.

Although two of the reviewers were more positive, there are specific methodological issues to be addressed before acceptance. For example, the power calculation, the recruitment procedures, decisions on cutpoints and scale transformation, and the rational for the multivariate analysis are not clear. Also, the discussion of the limitations of the approach utilized for the study has also not been broadly contextualized. It will be nice if you can addressed these together with the other concerns of the reviewers in your revision.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 11 2020 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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Adewale L. Oyeyemi, Ph.D

Academic Editor

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: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: This study is well conducted, ethically sound and relevant as it provides insight on the knowledge & Practices of this important Pandemic in the study population. I have a few comments and suggestions.

1) Line 78 “However, the numbers of cases and deaths are still on the rise…….” is this statement correct as at the time of writing????

2) Line 127-128 “At least, it was ensured one veterinary school was representative of each of the geopolitical zones in Nigeria” …… this statement is redundant as the only university that was not represented was the one that was excluded.

3) Lines 129-131 “A total of 385 participants were needed considering ………. with an acceptable error of 5%” ……….. were needed to achieve what??? Power????

4) Lines 131-132 “ 10% of the sample size was added to give a total of 423 participants …. 10% attrition = 478

5) Although it was stated in line 132 that ……” For student recruitment, a purposive and chain referral sampling techniques was performed” give details of how the sampling was done. What is the end point? How was the sample size distributed for the variuod schools etc

6) Line 150 “responses were scored” How???

7) Lines 190-192 “The levels of measured outcomes were expressed as mean and standard deviation (Mean ± SD)”……. Even if they are not normally distributed????

8) Line 197 “Variables significant at p ≤ 0.25 were processed further by the logistic regression” what inform the use of this cut off

9) I don’t know if the 95% CI in table 1 is necessary

10) The OR in table 5is it crude or adjusted????

11) The first sentence in the conclusion is not derived from your data

Reviewer #2: Line 130: In the methods, the required sample size was about 400. This is a standard for a KAP Questionnaire study. However, the sample size does not require response rate estimates. It requires the expected differences to be detected. Please reconsider this note in the writing up.

Line 133: “For student recruitment, a purposive and chain referral sampling 133 techniques was performed”. A brief description may be necessary as this is not a standard sampling method used for questionnaires.

Line 145:these questions are not clearly presented. Were they measured on a likert-scale? Yes/no? each Question had the same responses as for all the questions in the survey? Where did the 31 total sum come from? Summing all responses? Were they in the same direction?

Line 170: this was an online survey. Anyone could have answered if respondents received the link. How can you be sure it was only filled by Vet Med students?

Line 192: why was this cutoff point selected? Why not, for example, 75%? Or 80%?

Why were the responses converted from a likert scale into 0 and 1? This is a descriptive study and readers may want to see the actual scores? Such conversion will limit the data and affect the comparison between groups of subjects.

Results

Some variables in table 1 could be collapsed to make more sense of the presented data.

Figures are not clear and not of any added value.

Line 219: some of the percentages presented in this section are scary. Especially for Vet Med students who should be more informed about the disease. Knowledge questions should be properly presented in the methods.

Some of the knowledge points in table 2 are still controversial. How this was decided to be true or false is still under scientific discussion.

Table 3: a p value above 0.05 is not statistically significant but could be used to decide on variables for regression models. Please modify the table notes accordingly.

Also, university name and region may be collinear with each others. Having them in the same model will introduce noise and redundancy.

Also, sample size calculations are conducted for a KAP study where a prevalence is presented. Conducting a logistic regression may not be a good idea especially with the number within each cell of the table. Collapsing the categories within each variable is needed to be able to conduct a logistic regression analysis.

Accordingly, the results may not be sound and scientific and the conclusions are limited by such.

Reviewer #3: The authors have gathered enough data and subjected the data appropriate statistical analysis and the conclusions drawn are appropriate. The manuscript was well written and i recommend that it be published as submitted.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Ado Danazumi Geidam

Reviewer #2: Yes: khalid A Kheirallah

Reviewer #3: Yes: Prof. J. D. Amin

[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.]

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Plos one review.docx

PONE-D-20-28765R1

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 Pandemic) in Nigeria: Multi-institutional Survey of Knowledge, Practices and Perception Amongst Undergraduate Veterinary Medical Students

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Adebowale,

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.

There are still concerns on methodological clarity of the manuscript and the external validity of the results. At present the methods is not sufficiently described to support independent replication of the study. Please clarify and include a statement in the manuscript to confirm that the online survey was based on the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES), and guidelines for good practice in the conduct and reporting of online research.

Eysenbach G. Improving the quality of Web surveys:the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES) [published correction appears in doi:10.2196/jmir.2042] J Med Internet Res. 2004;6(3):e34. 10.2196/jmir.6.3 e34

It will be good if the authors, based on their local knowledge, provide an estimate of the total number of all the veterinary medical students (DV1 to DV5) in the study population (the 10 enlisted universities) that were eligible to participate in the study. This way the readers can make their independent judgment on the external validity of the results beyond the calculated sample size and the response rate. The last sentence of the limitation section seems tenuous. It is ambiguous to claim that self-selection and respondent biases or issue of generalizability  can be eliminated by having a response rate above the minimum estimated sample size. Using only limited number of participants in each school constitute a threat to the external validity of the results that is worth further discussion in the limitation section of the manuscript.

If possible, the authors should also consider to include the flow chart of the participants recruitment process to clearly indicate how many participants from each school click on the survey link (how many did not attempt any question), how many started the survey (how many started but did not complete) and how many finally completed the survey. Please take careful attention to address these and the other concerns of the reviewers.   

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 18 2021 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: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Adewale L. Oyeyemi, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: (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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

**********

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: 131-133----"The total sample size was divided equally among the veterinary schools (43 students per university). We purposively recruited a minimum of nine at each level (DVM 1-DVM 5) across the participating universities" – this is more like a Quota sampling; So the statement in 135 -136 “Purposive and convenience chain referral sampling technique was performed for student recruitment” needs to be rephrase

Reviewer #2: Statistical methods used to calculate the sample size related to KAP study and descriptive statistics using percentages and means for KAP. It does not allow comparisons and regression analyses. This was suggested initially and was not fully addressed. Using only a limited number of participants from each school does not mean you can compare by year and school, for example. An online survey is suited to recruit a large number of participants as this is a method to overcome other validity issues. As well, you will never be sure that those who filled the survey are actually those intended to.

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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: Yes: Ado Danazumi Geidam

Reviewer #2: Yes: Khalid A. Kheirallah

[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.

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 Pandemic) in Nigeria: Multi-institutional Survey of Knowledge, Practices and Perception Amongst Undergraduate Veterinary Medical Students

PONE-D-20-28765R2

Dear Dr. Adebowale,

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 for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, 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,

Adewale L. Oyeyemi, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

**********

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: Yes

**********

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: Yes: Ado Danazumi Geidam