Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article entitled "Acceptance factors for the social norms promoted by the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in the rural areas: Case study of the Central-western region of Burkina Faso" highlights the important insights regarding CLTS approach in developing countries like Burkina Faso.  The article is written well with appropriate methodology and comprehensive data presentation.  I believe such kind of research data is important to convince and support the application of scientific knowledge in the community based upon appropriate research findings.  

The article is well-written and can be accepted after English language corrections. 

Author Response

Responses to questions, comments and suggestions from reviewer 1

 

We, the authors, would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the time that you have spent on our manuscript, for your valuable comments, questions and concerns. We took into consideration, carefully, the proposed changes and they have been reflected upon and integrated into this revised version. For all questions and comments, please find below a point by point response, as well as background material and citations to new references, added to the new version of the manuscript. Whenever we felt it was necessary to explore the issue further, we provided a few changes to the manuscript for improvement. The comments are in blue and the responses from the authors are in black. We do hope this new submission, with the responses given below, will address the concerns raised by the initial manuscript.

 

REVIEWER #1:

• The article entitled "Acceptance factors for the social norms promoted by the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in the rural areas: Case study of the Central-western region of Burkina Faso" highlights the important insights regarding CLTS approach in developing countries like Burkina Faso.  The article is written well with appropriate methodology and comprehensive data presentation.  I believe such kind of research data is important to convince and support the application of scientific knowledge in the community based upon appropriate research findings.

Author’ response: Thank you for your very positive comment.

 

• The article is well-written and can be accepted after English language corrections.

Author’ response: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. Linguistic corrections and improvements have been made in the new version of the manuscript with the help of a native English colleague.

 

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the article entitled "Acceptance factors for the social norms promoted by the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in the rural areas: Case study of the Central-western region of Burkina Faso". This is a very interesting study, but it requires considerable refinement before publication. The authors should pay attention to the volume of the manuscript, which in the opinion of the reviewer should be smaller. Especially the introduction, which is close to the length of the discussion section, should be shortened. The list of references should also be verified with consideration of whether all items and content are used correctly in the presented manuscript. The method of presenting data in tables requires unification. Additionally, the table on page 28 is missing a title. Authors should also verify the spelling of abbreviations used in the manuscript and adopt the rule that when using a given term for the first time, it should be provided with the abbreviation in parentheses and then use this abbreviation in the text. Abstract on line 30 the abbreviation ODF appears, the explanation of which does not appear until line 93. Authors should also consider introducing a subsection in the results section. The current wording makes it very difficult to read the content easily.

In general, the organization of the manuscript and its presentation make it difficult for the reader to get to know the subject of the publication.

In addition, the authors dedicated a whole separate subsection to ethical issues, but nowhere is there any mention of the approval of the bioethics committee for this study and the number of the same.

The authors present an extensive discussion, which, however, lacks any mention of the potential limitations of the presented study.

Author Response

Responses to questions, comments and suggestions from reviewer 2

 

We, the authors, would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the time that you have spent on our manuscript, for your valuable comments, questions and concerns. We took into consideration, carefully, the proposed changes and they have been reflected upon and integrated into this revised version. For all questions and comments, please find below a point by point response, as well as background material and citations to new references, added to the new version of the manuscript. Whenever we felt it was necessary to explore the issue further, we provided a few changes to the manuscript for improvement. The comments are in blue and the responses from the authors are in black. We do hope this new submission, with the responses given below, will address the concerns raised by the initial manuscript.

 

REVIEWER #2:

• I have read the article entitled "Acceptance factors for the social norms promoted by the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in the rural areas: Case study of the Central-western region of Burkina Faso". This is a very interesting study, but it requires considerable refinement before publication. The authors should pay attention to the volume of the manuscript, which in the opinion of the reviewer should be smaller. Especially the introduction, which is close to the length of the discussion section, should be shortened. The list of references should also be verified with consideration of whether all items and content are used correctly in the presented manuscript.

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. As suggested by the reviewer, we have reduced the volume of the article especially for the introduction. We have tried to be as succinct as possible while highlighting the strong points and the problematic to which our study has provided some answers. The overall organization of the article, particularly in the methodology and results sections, has been improved. The list of references has been checked and the contents are correctly used.

 

• The method of presenting data in tables requires unification. Additionally, the table on page 28 is missing a title.

Author’ response: Thank you for your suggestion and the remark concerning the missing of a table title on page 28. The presentation of the tables has been standardized as suggested by the reviewer. All tables now have the same format. A title has also been associated with the table on page 28 in the revised version of the manuscript

 

• Authors should also verify the spelling of abbreviations used in the manuscript and adopt the rule that when using a given term for the first time, it should be provided with the abbreviation in parentheses and then use this abbreviation in the text. Abstract on line 30 the abbreviation ODF appears, the explanation of which does not appear until line 93.

Author’ response: Thank you for your remark. We have corrected this error in the revised manuscript.

 

• Authors should also consider introducing a subsection in the results section. The current wording makes it very difficult to read the content easily. In general, the organization of the manuscript and its presentation make it difficult for the reader to get to know the subject of the publication.

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. Since the acceptance factors have been classified into 6 categories (social, economic, environmental, territorial, governance and technological), a sub-section corresponding to each category and its constituent factors has been introduced in the Results section of the revised manuscript. The overall organization of the article, particularly in the methodology and results sections, has been improved. This is for presentation purposes and to make the paper easier to read and understand for the reader.

 

• In addition, the authors dedicated a whole separate subsection to ethical issues, but nowhere is there any mention of the approval of the bioethics committee for this study and the number of the same.

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. This study has been approved by an ethics committee. It is the Research Ethics and Deontology Committee of the 2iE Institute. We have provided the approval letter and number (N°2023/01/DG/SG/DR/HK/fg) to the journal. The name of the committee and the approval number have been added to the revised manuscript in the Ethical considerations section.

 

• The authors present an extensive discussion, which, however, lacks any mention of the potential limitations of the presented study.

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment.

The main limitation of our study was mentioned in the discussion with these sentences: “Factors for acceptance of a new social norm such as CLTS vary among people and contexts. Thus, the acceptance factors found in this paper cannot be generalized to all contexts (all countries) of CLTS implementation”. The results of our study are applicable in socio-economic, political, natural and cultural contexts similar to those of Burkina Faso and the low-income countries.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1. Line 110: this section belongs to the content of “introduction”, Please briefly describe and remove unnecessary content;

2. Figure 1 is more like a table; can the author change it?

3. There is no key content in Figure 2, please delete it;

4. Section 3 (Study area and sampling) should be merged in section 2.

5. Line 322: For Table 1, abbreviation is suggested to be used, such as, IIG present Individual Interview Guide; the Vertical table is normally used for easy reading.

6. Line 620: change the table to vertical table as below to save space and easy for reading:

Item	Factors	Score	Total score
Environmental factors (C1)	Desire for a clean-living environment and the reduction of nauseating odors
	Understanding the health and economic consequences of OD

 

 The concise, precise, and necessary words/sentence/paragraph should be used in the manuscript.

 

Author Response

Responses to questions, comments and suggestions from reviewer 3

 

We, the authors, would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the time that you have spent on our manuscript, for your valuable comments, questions and concerns. We took into consideration, carefully, the proposed changes and they have been reflected upon and integrated into this revised version. For all questions and comments, please find below a point by point response, as well as background material and citations to new references, added to the new version of the manuscript. Whenever we felt it was necessary to explore the issue further, we provided a few changes to the manuscript for improvement. The comments are in blue and the responses from the authors are in black. We do hope this new submission, with the responses given below, will address the concerns raised by the initial manuscript.

REVIEWER #3:

• Line 110: this section belongs to the content of “introduction”, Please briefly describe and remove unnecessary content;

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. As suggested by the reviewer, we have reduced the volume of the introduction. We have tried to be as succinct as possible while highlighting the key points and the problematic to which our study has provided some answers.

 

• Figure 1 is more like a table; can the author change it?

Author’ response: Thank you for your remark. Figure 1 has been transformed into a table. Then, the title "Figure 1" in the old version has been changed to "Table 2" in the revised manuscript. You can check this on line 268 of the revised manuscript.

 

• There is no key content in Figure 2, please delete it;

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. The authors believe that Figure 2 is important and deserves to be keeped in the manuscript. It shows how the acceptance factors were evaluated and how their scores and the scores of the categories to which they belong were determined.

 

• Section 3 (Study area and sampling) should be merged in section 2.

Author’ response: Thank you for your suggestion. As suggested by the reviewer, we have merged section 3 (study area and sampling) and section 2 (method) in the revised manuscript.  The new section has been named "3. Materials and methods" and includes 5 sub-points namely: Study area (1); Sampling (2); Ethical Considerations (3); Study design (4) and Data analysis (5).

 

 

• Line 322: For Table 1, abbreviation is suggested to be used, such as, IIG present Individual Interview Guide.

Author’ response: Thank you for your suggestion. However, the authors prefer to keep the names in table 1 as they are for the readers, especially as the table in line 322 was not overloaded.

 

• Line 620: change the table to vertical table as below to save space and easy for reading:

 

Author’ response: Thank you for your suggestion. The table on line 620 has been modified so that it reads vertically as suggested by the reviewer. You can see the new table following the model on line 599 of the revised manuscript. Thank you again for this wonderful proposal.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

1.     Line 213 and 217： ‘confidence interval’ maybe ‘confidence level’, please check.

2.     Line 217-218: I suggest changing the table to a sentence.

3.     In order to increase the readability and readability of the article, it is recommended that this article be more concise. For example, the conclusion section is shortened to half a page; section 1 is deleted or used as supplementary material of the article.

Author Response

Responses to questions, comments and suggestions from reviewer 3

 

We, the authors, would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the time that you have spent on our manuscript, for your valuable comments, questions and concerns. We took into consideration, carefully, the proposed changes and they have been reflected upon and integrated into this revised version. For all questions and comments, please find below a point by point response, as well as background material and citations to new references, added to the new version of the manuscript. Whenever we felt it was necessary to explore the issue further, we provided a few changes to the manuscript for improvement. The comments are in blue and the responses from the authors are in black. We do hope this new submission, with the responses given below, will address the concerns raised by the initial manuscript.

REVIEWER #3:

• Line 213 and 217： ‘confidence interval’ maybe ‘confidence level’, please check.

Author’ response: Thank you for your comment. After checking, we found that both expressions are used and experiment the same reality. However, we have changed “confidence interval” by “confidence level” in the revised manuscript. You can check this on line 140-141 of the revised manuscript

 

• Line 217-218: I suggest changing the table to a sentence.

Author’ response: Thank you for your suggestion. The table has been changed to a sentence in the revised manuscript. You can check this on line 141 of the revised manuscript.

 

• In order to increase the readability and readability of the article, it is recommended that this article be more concise. For example, the conclusion section is shortened to half a page; section 1 is deleted or used as supplementary material of the article;

Author’ response: Thank you for your recommendation. As suggested by the reviewer, section 1 entitled “Definition and difference between social acceptance and social acceptability” has been removed from the revised manuscript but added as supplementary material of the article. The conclusion section has also been reduced as suggested by the reviewer.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx