Religious Attendance in a Secular Country Protects Adolescents from Health-Risk Behavior Only in Combination with Participation in Church Activities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I enjoyed this article and praise the care and detail provided along with challenging results that compel attention.

ln 44 'high' compared to what? Without comparison this comment is baseless and unhelpful

ln 70-2 excellent statement of research objective

ln 74-136 sample well described. Except greater clarity on administration of on-line questionnaire in classes would be helpful. Measures are identified and described clearly. I dislike arbitrarily dichotomised variables as they obscure diversity and nuance. They are bare minimum, but adequate to a rough estimation of the relationships under investigation. Some idea of known parameters would be helpful - e.g. national rate of church attendance, - but again not needed to estimate the relationships in question.

ln 137 ff  solid statistical analysis

Clear tabular presentation of findings and well written summaries of key findings

 Findings are distinctive and highly reliable. They are well discussed and compared with other studies with useful discussion about potential sources of difference, without defensiveness.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This was a sound article carried out according to well-established procedures. Its major points of interest were in the analytical discussion pertaining to possible contextual causation for the results, since they were somewhat contradictory to expectation in relation to other studies on similar topics.

The only thing that caused a pause in my reading was the use of the word 'worst' in line 65, which seemed unnecessarily judgmental. Probably 'weakest' relationship would be more accurate?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article provides interesting data but it lacks consistency in terms of relating the study case to previous research. It is a good example of a particular case but without connections to other similar studies carried out in other places, which makes it out of the academia track.

The authors are not claryfing which church do they intend to refer. Catholic Church? Other Christian Churches? Those assumptions are not academic enough.

The paper is a well-informed article on the behaviour of youth but it does not refer to youth studies. It also lacks social media factor: do these young people do what they do also because of social media pressure?

There is a missed connection to european surveys on youth and health.

The article in this stage can not be published but with major revisions it could benefit from scientific soundness.

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Also discussion is poor in comparison to all the work done.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Clear improvement of the article and the suggestions. Now it has the quality for IJERPH.