https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5689-2755
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMarch 24, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-09673 Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana: A Cross-Sectional Study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tlale, 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 Jul 02 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:
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. 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, David Teye Doku Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: Dear Tlale, Thank you for the considering Plos One for your research output. The reviewers have now completed their evaluation of your manuscript. They have raise many major concerns which need to be addressed before the manuscript can be accepted for publication. Therefore, we would like to invite you to appropriately address all the suggestions raised by the reviewers and indicate the revisions made to in the manuscript in accordance with the journals guidelines for submission of revised manuscript. Please pay attention to the revision of the methods section to ensure that it can be understood by the international audience. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. 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 2. Please amend your current ethics statement to include the full name of the ethics committee/institutional review board(s) that approved your specific study. 3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. Moreover, please include more details on how the questionnaire was pre-tested, and whether it was validated. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: [We also thank the FHI Botswana for partially funding this research project.] We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: [The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.] Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure section: [The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.] We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: FHI 360
Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. “The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. 2. 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We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests 6. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. 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Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 7. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 2, 7 and 8 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table. 8. Please include a title for Table 4. [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: I Don't Know Reviewer #4: I Don't Know ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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: Thank you for considering me to review this manuscript, “Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana: Across-Sectional Study”. As the only viable option to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic is via vaccination, this implies understanding vaccination hesitancy is paramount so that factors that contribute to vaccination hesitancy could be recognized so that effectively counteract measures -health education - could be contemplated. This study purports to explore the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in southern Africa country, Botswana. The authors developed their questions to solicit acceptance rate and risk perception. The authors also included various socio-demographic information and clinical risk factors. The result seems interesting but the authors need to address some issues to render their manuscript with high caliber scientific merit. Some comments for the authors are detailed below TITLE The content of the study -the instrument used- is currently not clear to the readers. I would think here that the title would once the outcome measures are made explicit in the method section. ABSTRACT The ABSTRACT in general has been structured according to the style of this journal. Minor issues: change “Introduction” to “Background”. During COVID, there is a ‘tradition’ in most journals to include the dates of the data collection (1-28 February 2021). It seems there is the repetition of the aims (“This study, aims to assess the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in Botswana” … “This study aims to assess the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in Botswana”. SUGGESTION, keep one and create a subheading -Method. In the method, bring outcomes measures on board and the fact the study explored socio-demographic information and some risk factors. This information is not needed (…” and 31.3% of participants”) (“At P<0.05, the following...”. Suggestion: delete Word employed should be geared toward the outcome measures of the study. KEYWORD. This keyword should be included (“vaccine hesitancy”) BACKGROUND INFORMATION (INTRODUCTION) The background information appears to lead the reader to sense what is coming up as the aims of this study -well done. This statement should be rephrased (“Vaccine acceptance mirrors the public’s perception towards the disease threat, demand for and attitude towards the vaccine”) The word ‘race’ (“With regards to race, African-Americans and Hispanics demonstrated higher vaccine hesitancy than other races in a US study [16].”) is confusing. Suggestion: ethic group or simple state as following (“There is subcultural diversity, African-Americans and Hispanics demonstrated higher vaccine hesitancy than other cultural or ethnic groups in a US study”. To avoid too much rambling (“Global literature has also recognized the distinctive roles of several socio-demographic determinants of health in vaccine acceptance and risk perception. Additionally, ….Moreover, credible sources of information about vaccines such as government were reported to instil high levels of trust amongst the public[10].”). Since these paragraphs are preceded by a literature view on the rate of vaccine hesitancy, this paragraph should simply articulate ‘associated factors of vaccine hesitancy’. For a better flow of information, the narration on the rate of vaccine hesitancy should be sent to the previous paragraph. For aims (“We therefore assessed the acceptance and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines in Botswana in order to inform the planned population roll out of the vaccines.”), it should reflect the content of the instrument used or developed. Also, the associated factors explored should be mentioned as one of the aims. MATERIALS AND METHODS The problem with the METHOD is that the authors failed to elaborate on the development of the questionnaire used. Further, there is no information on the reliability and other important information on its applicability to the present population. Please attend to this issue. Overall, the method has much to be desired. I would encourage the authors to stick with the subheadings that are recommended by Strobe observational study checklist (https://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists). This statement touches on an important part of the study (“Following consent, participants were enrolled into the study by administering the questionnaires in the selected localities. This happened at government departments, shops, markets and private companies”.). How data collection was done should be more explicit in the text. Please identify the name of the technique for data collection (probabilistic sampling as stated in the limitation? ). Different parts of the text describing recruiting and data collection should be consistent with each other. Thus, strict adherence to Strobe observational study checklist would help. For us international reader, we may not understand what constitute “across the nine (9) COVID-19 zones in Botswana”. Please define. The rationale for including this statement (“A risk perception model which integrates three core dimensions; cognitive factors (knowledge), experiential factors (emotion) and socio-cultural factors (norms, values) was used to guide in the development of the questions”) is needed. Also, a separate section is needed to highlight the development of the questionnaire. This should be merged with this (“designed from literature review [12, 21, 22]”). Any reference number was assigned for the present ethical approval from IRB? The result section has a lot of information and some of them were not described in the methodology or stated as the aim of the study. This is major misgiving of this manuscript. The confusion partly stems from the factor that outcome measures were not described in the method. Information in different tables should be merged into coherent themes. DISCUSSION I am not going to dwell too much on the discussion section since would invariably be changed if the above-mentioned suggestions are contemplated ACKNOWLEDGEMENT You want to separate acknowledged name (ACKNOWLEDGMENT) person by coma rather than bullets. REFERENCES The authors have employed 30 references. Most of them are relevant and update. Reviewer #2: General Comments This is a relevant and current topic. As countries work to start COVID-19 vaccination programmes, the issues of acceptance and risk perception are essential research topics. This is more so in Africa where the epidemiology of COVID-19 has been different and thus risk perception and acceptance of vaccination is likely to differ from developed countries. The manuscript is generally well written. Specific Comments: 1. Throughout the manuscript, you use COVID at some places and COVID-19 at other places. Please use COVID-19. 2. Title: “a cross–sectional study” in my opinion does not add anything useful to the title while increasing the length. So my suggestion is to remove that 3. Abstract: there is repetition of the study objective at the end of the introduction and then the objective parts. I suggest you remove it at the end of the introduction part 4. At the results part of the abstract you have “At P<0.05, the following factors were associated with willingness to take the COVID vaccine: gender, education level, occupation and COVID zone”. To make it more meaningful in my opinion, kindly consider revising as ‘factors found to be associated with willingness to take the COVID vaccine were gender (p=…..), education level (p=…), occupation (p=…) and COVID zone (p=…..)’. And do put the actual p values 5. Then you have “Safety of the vaccine was associated with age group and religion”. Give readers the evidence of the association please, state the p values at least. 6. You also have “the acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccine in Botswana was 73.4% and 31.3% of participants perceived the COVID vaccine as unsafe”. What was the 95% confidence intervals for these rates? That will be very useful 7. Introduction: generally I feel this could be shorter than current length. It has some aspects more sounding likely discussion using many studies from other places. That could be made more concise and therefore reduce the length. Consider this. 8. Study population: you just mentioned that stratified sampling was used to select study participants but offer on more details. How was this done exactly? Were the population size for each of the zones factored into the number recruited per zone? You do not tell us how the 9 zones were created and how that related to the study design. 9. Then you say “Individuals/study participants were selected within the localities randomly selected from the Covid-19 zones”, how was this done? 10. Was there any exclusion criteria 11. You have “To cover the 9 COVID-19 zones, we estimated a sample of 383 multiplied by giving a total of 3447”, there is something missing. It does not read well to me, kindly have a look. 12. Since this was in-person interviewer administered questionnaire, how was the safety of everyone involved assured? 13. Results: if this was interviewer administered why do you have so many missing values for almost each of the variables? 14. Consider presenting table 2 and 4 as figures rather, I think they will be nicer e.g. as a pie chart or other appropriate figure type. And most importantly, please indicate the 95%CI for the acceptance rates 15. You have just too many tables. Apart from those I have pointed out can be figures, there are still a number of tables that can be put together as 1 larger table and will still be clear. Have a look and do this for tables 6-8 and then 9-10. 16. You mentioned multivariate analysis but I see no such results presented 17. Check and deal with some few long sentences and grammatical errors. Reviewer #3: I have some comments about the manuscript regarding the content of tables, result part, and some minor language issues that follow below. I would strongly recommend that the authors recheck the numbers in the tables. Results 1)It seems that an error exists in Table 1, page 11 regarding total number of “education level” which is 5310?! Why not 5300? 2) In Table 2, page 12: why total number is not 5300? If missing data exist, I suggest that the authors add them to the table 3) Page 12, the part d of the results about “Factors associated with acceptance for the COVID vaccine in Botswana”: as all the factors have been explained, a short explanation about how occupations were associated with acceptance of the COVID vaccine is good to be added to the text 4) Regarding Table 4, page 13, as total number is 4784, whether 516 is missing here? Then it is better to provide info about missing data in the table 5) Regarding Table 6, page 14, are there missing data? then it is better to provide the number of missing data in the table 6) Regarding Table 7, page 15, I think it is better to add info about missing data if exist 7) In Table 8: it seems that an error exists regarding total numbers: 1172+3772 8) In Table 9, page 16: it seems that an error exists here. Regarding total frequencies, why is it 5931? and percent which is 111,9 ?! 9) Table 10: It seems that an error exists here too regarding total frequencies: why is it 6203? and percent which is 117 ?! *And some minor language issues: page 15 line 2: Forty nine percent of participants who said their religion and “cultural” hinders vaccine uptake were willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. use the word "culture" instead of cultural Regarding title of Table 7, delete the first “believes” and add "religious" instead of religion Page 15: regarding the line that follows “Willing to receive COVID vaccine though trust other traditional and religious methods over vaccine” delete i Reviewer #4: Thank you for considering me to review this manuscript, “Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana: Across-Sectional Study”. As the only viable option to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic is via vaccination, this implies understanding vaccination hesitancy is paramount so that factors that contribute to vaccination hesitancy could be recognized so that effectively counteract measures -health education - could be contemplated. This study purports to explore the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in southern Africa country, Botswana. The authors developed their questions to solicit acceptance rate and risk perception. The authors also included various socio-demographic information and clinical risk factors. The result seems interesting but the authors need to address some issues to render their manuscript with high caliber scientific merit. Some comments for the authors are detailed below TITLE The content of the study -the instrument used- is currently not clear to the readers. I would think here that the title would once the outcome measures are made explicit in the method section. ABSTRACT The ABSTRACT in general has been structured according to the style of this journal. Minor issues: change “Introduction” to “Background”. During COVID, there is a ‘tradition’ in most journals to include the dates of the data collection (1-28 February 2021). It seems there is the repetition of the aims (“This study, aims to assess the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in Botswana” … “This study aims to assess the acceptance rate and risk perception of COVID-19 vaccines amongst the general population in Botswana”. SUGGESTION, keep one and create a subheading -Method. In the method, bring outcomes measures on board and the fact the study explored socio-demographic information and some risk factors. This information is not needed (…” and 31.3% of participants”) (“At P<0.05, the following...”. Suggestion: delete Word employed should be geared toward the outcome measures of the study. KEYWORD. This keyword should be included (“vaccine hesitancy”) BACKGROUND INFORMATION (INTRODUCTION) The background information appears to lead the reader to sense what is coming up as the aims of this study -well done. This statement should be rephrased (“Vaccine acceptance mirrors the public’s perception towards the disease threat, demand for and attitude towards the vaccine”) The word ‘race’ (“With regards to race, African-Americans and Hispanics demonstrated higher vaccine hesitancy than other races in a US study [16].”) is confusing. Suggestion: ethic group or simple state as following (“There is subcultural diversity, African-Americans and Hispanics demonstrated higher vaccine hesitancy than other cultural or ethnic groups in a US study”. To avoid too much rambling (“Global literature has also recognized the distinctive roles of several socio-demographic determinants of health in vaccine acceptance and risk perception. Additionally, ….Moreover, credible sources of information about vaccines such as government were reported to instil high levels of trust amongst the public[10].”). Since these paragraphs are preceded by a literature view on the rate of vaccine hesitancy, this paragraph should simply articulate ‘associated factors of vaccine hesitancy’. For a better flow of information, the narration on the rate of vaccine hesitancy should be sent to the previous paragraph. For aims (“We therefore assessed the acceptance and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines in Botswana in order to inform the planned population roll out of the vaccines.”), it should reflect the content of the instrument used or developed. Also, the associated factors explored should be mentioned as one of the aims. MATERIALS AND METHODS The problem with the METHOD is that the authors failed to elaborate on the development of the questionnaire used. Further, there is no information on the reliability and other important information on its applicability to the present population. Please attend to this issue. Overall, the method has much to be desired. I would encourage the authors to stick with the subheadings that are recommended by Strobe observational study checklist (https://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists). This statement touches on an important part of the study (“Following consent, participants were enrolled into the study by administering the questionnaires in the selected localities. This happened at government departments, shops, markets and private companies”.). How data collection was done should be more explicit in the text. Please identify the name of the technique for data collection (probabilistic sampling as stated in the limitation? ). Different parts of the text describing recruiting and data collection should be consistent with each other. Thus, strict adherence to Strobe observational study checklist would help. For us international reader, we may not understand what constitute “across the nine (9) COVID-19 zones in Botswana”. Please define. The rationale for including this statement (“A risk perception model which integrates three core dimensions; cognitive factors (knowledge), experiential factors (emotion) and socio-cultural factors (norms, values) was used to guide in the development of the questions”) is needed. Also, a separate section is needed to highlight the development of the questionnaire. This should be merged with this (“designed from literature review [12, 21, 22]”). Any reference number was assigned for the present ethical approval from IRB? The result section has a lot of information and some of them were not described in the methodology or stated as the aim of the study. This is major misgiving of this manuscript. The confusion partly stems from the factor that outcome measures were not described in the method. Information in different tables should be merged into coherent themes. DISCUSSION I am not going to dwell too much on the discussion section since would invariably be changed if the above-mentioned suggestions are contemplated ACKNOWLEDGEMENT You want to separate acknowledged name (ACKNOWLEDGMENT) person by coma rather than bullets. REFERENCES The authors have employed 30 references. Most of them are relevant and update. ********** 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: Samir Al-Adawi Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: Yes: Samir Al-Adawi [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. 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| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-21-09673R1Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in BotswanaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tlale, 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. ============================== The reviewers have again raised some important issues which we believe should be addressed in order to strengthen the manuscript for publication. For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 24 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:
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, David Teye Doku 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. [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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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: 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 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: Thank you for considering me to re-review this manuscript and now entitled, “Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana. This manuscript was scrutinized by 3 reviewers including myself. The authors have addressed all the comments raised by the reviewers. Both the conceptual and scientific merit of the manuscript has now improved Some minor issues. Under “Qualifications and emails of all authors”, some of the authors were not accompanied their qualifications. Any reason? In the method, maybe this statement (“Bias 203 Participation were selected on a …. rate by the participants) could be considered as a limitation. This could be transferred to the Discussion. However, the authors need to expand on the employed probabilistic sampling The strength of this study is the fact that the authors developed the study questionnaire and it dispensed in both languages (English and Setswana). It would be nice if the authors insert one paragraph or so on the development and validation of the questionnaire. How many items were on the questionnaire? Maybe identify the themes covered (e.g., Demographic information, Cognitive Factors, Experiential Factors, and Socio-cultural factors). The authors could give examples or rationale for each factor. One item of the questionnaire (Section B – Cognitive Factors) B1 asks, “Are you suffering from any of the following ….). I am not sure whether this cognitive factor or is it? I would beg to differ here from other reviewers by recommending the deletion of Figure 1 and Figure 1. First of all, this manuscript is already a bulk one. Also, these figures do not add anything new. This information could be simply narrated in the text. Overall, this is important and well conducted work and I would advocate publication if those minor issues can be properly addressed. Reviewer #2: This is surely an improved version of the manuscript. These few things I believe if addressed will make it even better: 1. Generally your table titles need to be improved such that the tables can stand alone and still be readily meaningful to the reader e.g. Tables 1 and 3 could end with (N= 5300). Table 4 title is difficult to understand so rephrase it to be complete and clearly understood. Most titles currently end with “in Botswana” but this was just among the study participants so commonly that is what the title should indicate, something like ‘among study participants in Botswana’ 2. Even though you agreed to attach the questionnaire as supplementary file, there is still the need in the methods section to briefly describe the development of the questionnaire, the content and any piloting processes etc. 3. You have modified to say, this was self-administered questionnaire, does that imply that everyone who participated could read and write in English or the local language used? That would mean that anyone who could not read and write the 2 languages was excluded? You still need to clarify this process. 4. Tables 5 and 6 can easily be one table 5. Now you have multivariate analysis results so I would expect that to influence what is presented in the abstract results section but I don’t seem to see that. ********** 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: Samir Al-Adawi 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. |
| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-21-09673R2Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in BotswanaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tlale, 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. ============================== In your response to Reviwer 2, you indicated that 95.7% of your respondents at least attended primary school. Could you explain how the 4.3% of the respondents who did not attend at least primary school responded to your self-administered questionnaire of that nature. Please clarify this before final decision is reached on your manuscript. “The study also used self-administered questionnaires and the disadvantages of self-administered questionnaires is low response rates, exclusion of those who cannot read and write and that the researcher cannot couch for the validity of the responses from self-administered surveys. However in our study the response rate was high more than 95 % and also around 95.7% of participants had at least attended primary school level” ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 12 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:
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, David Teye Doku 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 (if provided): In your response to Reviwer 2, you indicated that 95.7% of your respondents at least attended primary school. Could you explain how the 4.3% of the respondents who did not attend at least primary school responded to your self-administered questionnaire of that nature. Please clarify this. “The study also used self-administered questionnaires and the disadvantages of self-administered questionnaires is low response rates, exclusion of those who cannot read and write and that the researcher cannot couch for the validity of the responses from self-administered surveys. However in our study the response rate was high more than 95 % and also around 95.7% of participants had at least attended primary school level” [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [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. |
| Revision 3 |
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Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana PONE-D-21-09673R3 Dear Dr. Tlale, 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, David Teye Doku Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-21-09673R3 Acceptance Rate and Risk Perception towards the COVID-19 Vaccine in Botswana Dear Dr. Tlale: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. 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 plosone@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 Dr. David Teye Doku Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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