Returnees’ Perspectives of the Adverse Impact of Forced Displacement on Children
Widaad Zaman
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsImportant line of inquiry examining non-Western SDOH for children of forced displacement. This manuscript could make a significant contribution to the literature, but needs to be reworked and English language usage revision before resubmission.
Line 16 - Is trauma exposure and response a topical area that will be discussed rather than a theme? It seems qualitatively different from disruption in health. If it were framed such as secondary trauma from response, for example, that may be a theme and in parallel structure to the first.
Line 41 - SDOH are adversely affected by such actions? Unclear language.
Line 57 - forced displacement is an ACE; it doesn't cause an ACE. Unclear language.
Reviewer has stopped commenting on language, but the paper needs a careful review for language and meaning.
Line 75 - Does Nigeria force displacement, or do they receive displaced persons from other areas of Nigeria. Unclear.
Line 96 - Need to describe an ACE framework before discussing its shortcomings. Paragraph starting on Line 104 should be placed before Line 96 to set up the context.
Line 116 - Define SDOH earlier & explain how they connect with ACEs
The literature section needs to be revised to examine the work of displacement on children and SODH. Then the gaps in the lit (ex: few examinations of child refugees and SODH; Western-centric lens) can be brought out.
Line 166 Need to describe how these two particular concepts were decided upon as a focus of the data analytic strategy.
Good job describing study area, but more is needed to describe how participants were selected into the study itself.
Line 213 - unclear
Unclear about study groups. There is a wide range, need to see table of ages. Gender? How might this affect results?
As discussed with the abstract, rework themes so that they aren't describe as topics.
SDOH are seemingly used here as a positive element of human development rather than determinants for how people might be adversely or positively affected. Need to clarify this throughout paper.
What about IRB? There seem to be personal names used in the results. I have stopped reading as a reviewer.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Thorough review is needed for meaning of sentences. Usage is issue.
Author Response
Comment 1: Line 16 - Is trauma exposure and response a topical area that will be discussed rather than a theme? It seems qualitatively different from disruption in health. If it were framed such as secondary trauma from response, for example, that may be a theme and in parallel structure to the first.
Response 1: We agree with this comment and and have made changes to the themes to better answer the research question. This can be seen in line 16
Comment 2: Line 41 - SDOH are adversely affected by such actions? Unclear language.
Response 2: We have clarified this sentence with better language in line 44
Comment 3: Line 57 - forced displacement is an ACE; it doesn't cause an ACE. Unclear language.
Response 3: We agree with this comment and have made significant changes to clarify this language throughout the manuscript.
Comment 4: Reviewer has stopped commenting on language, but the paper needs a careful review for language and meaning.
Comment 5: Line 75 - Does Nigeria force-displacement, or do they receive displaced persons from other areas of Nigeria? Unclear.
Response 5: We agree to this feedback and we have reworked the sentence to indicate that there are 3.4 million displaced persons in Nigeria. This information can be seen in line 79
Comment 6: Line 96 - Need to describe an ACE framework before discussing its shortcomings. Paragraph starting on Line 104 should be placed before Line 96 to set up the context.
Response 6: This reorganization has been made
Comment 7: Line 116 - Define SDOH earlier & explain how they connect with ACEs
Response 7: We agree with this comment and have added more information to align SDOH and ACEs. This information can be found in line 168
Comment 8: The literature section needs to be revised to examine the work of displacement on children and SODH. Then the gaps in the lit (ex: few examinations of child refugees and SODH; Western-centric lens) can be brought out.
Comment 9: Line 166: You need to describe how these two particular concepts were chosen as the focus of the data analytic strategy.
Response 9: We agree to these comments and have reworked our methodology section to clarify the phenomenological approach utilized. We recognize that all the tenants of this qualitative approach go hand in hand/ are inseparable, and we do not need to separate them as such. This information can be found in line 189
Comment 10: Good job describing study area, but more is needed to describe how participants were selected into the study itself.
Response 10: We agree to these comments and have included more information on the sampling method that was employed. Snowball smampling infomration can be seen in line 221
Comment 11: Line 213 - unclear
Comment 12: Unclear about study groups. There is a wide range, need to see table of ages. Gender? How might this affect results?
Response 12: We have made some major clarifications to the participants; although we cannot include the tables to include the information of the children, we just have the table with the information of the parents.
Comment 13: As discussed with the abstract, rework themes so that they aren't described as topics.
Response 13: The themes in the abstract and the result sections have been reworked and the new themes can be seen in line 15-16
Comment 14: SDOH are seemingly used here as a positive element of human development rather than determinants for how people might be adversely or positively affected. Need to clarify this throughout paper.
Response 14: We agree to this comment and have made edits to the paper. SDOH should be a positive thing, but due to forced displacement, it is now disrupted, which in turn has a negative impact.
Comment 15: What about IRB? There seem to be personal names used in the results. I have stopped reading as a reviewer
Response 15: We agree that the names seem like personal names, but they are pseudonyms names selected by the participants. We have indicated that these are pseudonym names in the paper and that information can be located in Line 253
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorseview of manuscript socsci-3109068 : Returnees’ Perspectives of the Adverse Impact of Forced Displacement on Children
This research qualitatively examined the impact of forced displacement in Nigeria on the health of children using the ACE’s framework.
Introduction - The introduction is very well written, comprehensive and thorough in its review of the past literature, as well as connecting past research to the current research.
Methods - I'm very confused about this methodology. The authors spend a lot of time describing the theory behind the method, but there is no description of the actual interview method employed in the study. What specific question prompts were used to elicit responses from the participants? Were questions divided into questions about the adults vs. the children? Were questions divided into questions pre and post leaving Michika, pre and post returning, etc.??? There are a lot of gaps in explaining the method.
Results – The results are intriguing, and cover many different areas that appear to affect the lives of children who have been displaced. I’m not an expert on qualitative research, and I’m not sure if just quoting participants’ narratives is the standard way to prove a hypothesis in this type of research. But I wonder if there cannot be some amount of quantitative analysis involved in order to make the results more impactful. For e.g., if there were any questionnaire data collected on the well-being or mental health of the children, is there a way to code the narrative accounts in such a way that they are then correlated with the mental health and well-being outcomes of the children?
The entire results and discussions sections are poorly written. The English contains serious grammatical and sentence construction issues, and needs to be heavily edited, particularly in the section reporting the participants' perspectives, but also in the discussion.
Overall, a very interesting study.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageSee above
Author Response
Comment 1:Introduction - The introduction is very well written, comprehensive and thorough in its review of the past literature, as well as connecting past research to the current research.
Response 1: Thank you for your feedback on this section
Comment 2: Methods - I'm very confused about this methodology. The authors spend a lot of time describing the theory behind the method, but there is no description of the actual interview method employed in the study. What specific question prompts were used to elicit responses from the participants? Were questions divided into questions about the adults vs. the children? Were questions divided into questions pre and post leaving Michika, pre and post returning, etc.??? There are a lot of gaps in explaining the method.
Response 2: We agree with this comment, and we have made significant clarifications to the methodology section and included that the data is part of a larger stat set, and the responses of the participants are based on their experience pre and post-leaving and returning to Michika.
The questions were not divided according to adults and children. Still, the experiences shared by the adults led to questions pertaining to their perspective on the impact of displacement on their children of which the data for this study was acquired.
Comment 3: Results – The results are intriguing, and cover many different areas that appear to affect the lives of children who have been displaced. I’m not an expert on qualitative research, and I’m not sure if just quoting participants’ narratives is the standard way to prove a hypothesis in this type of research. But I wonder if there cannot be some amount of quantitative analysis involved in order to make the results more impactful. For e.g., if there were any questionnaire data collected on the well-being or mental health of the children, is there a way to code the narrative accounts in such a way that they are then correlated with the mental health and well-being outcomes of the children?
Response 3: No quantitative data was collected, and for qualitative research, the direct quotes of the participants can suffice as evidence to answer the research question. Nevertheless, collecting some quantitative data can be considered for future studies; however, the population we interviewed has a bias toward completing surveys. They believe everyone who just comes in wants to just get their data and go and no one wants to know how they truly feel. That is the beauty of qualitative research: it provides a more subjective perspective to the data collection process, and it gives room to echo the voices of those we are researching clearly.
Comment 4: The entire results and discussions sections are poorly written. The English contains serious grammatical and sentence construction issues, and needs to be heavily edited, particularly in the section reporting the participants' perspectives, but also in the discussion.
Response 4: We agree to this comment and have made proper edits to this section. We initially wanted to leave the quotes the way it was translated, but we found a way to clarify the English without losing the essence and meaning the participants provided in their interviews.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsExcellent revisions.
Conceptual clarity is needed regarding SDOH throughout. SDOH can be positive or negative and authors need to state which direction. The word "disruption" is used throughout, but that can be negative or positive. Clarify. Also clarify that ACEs can lead to changes in SDOH in first ACE section (Line 61).
Well done to explain the heightened risks for internally, forcibly displaced children.
Line 208 - end quote needed.
Data Collection - What were the inclusion and exclusion criteria? What is the justification for those?
Data Analysis - Clarify how TPh is used as an approach. That is not mentioned in this section.
Results - employment and health care sections need to be better linked to the impact on children.
Line 13: Missing the word "positive" between the and SDOH
Author Response
Comments 1: Conceptual clarity is needed regarding SDOH throughout. SDOH can be positive or negative, and authors need to state which direction. The word "disruption" is used throughout, but that can be negative or positive. Clarify. Also, in the first ACE section (Line 61), clarify that ACEs can lead to changes in SDOH.
Response 1: The correction was made to this comment, and disruption to SDOH was operationalized in this paper as a negative phenomenon with response to the SDOH of the study population. See Line 46
In Line 61, the recommended edit was implemented, and ACEs were identified as a phenomenon that brings a change to SDOH.
Comments 2: Well done to explain the heightened risks for internally, forcibly displaced children.
Response 2: Thank you
Comments 3: Line 208 - end quote needed.
Response 3: Quote was closed/ended
Comments 4: Data Collection - What were the inclusion and exclusion criteria? What is the justification for this?
Response 4: The inclusion criteria have been included to ensure that data collected is from participants who are only impacted by the phenomenon in the study
Comments 5: Data Analysis - Clarify how TPh is used as an approach. That is not mentioned in this section.
Response 5: The TPh approach includes how the data is being collected. Given the first author's positionality as a state indigene with prior knowledge of this experience, there needed to be a separation from personal experience and data to ensure purity in the data.
Comments 6: Results - employment and health care sections need to be better linked to the impact on children.
Response 6: Employment and healthcare have been better linked from the participants' perspectives. Employment and healthcare have a broader impact, but for the children, it means work opportunities for working-age children or other economic opportunities are limited. At the same time, there are few opportunities for parents to earn, which becomes a trickle-down effect of lack and an increase in poverty.
Comments 7: Line 13: Missing the word "positive" between the and SDOH
Response 7: the word “positive” has been added
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI am satisfied with the revisions made.
Author Response
Greetings,
Thank you for your review of our article.
Sincerly,
Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
