Childhood Prevalence of Involvement with the Child Protection System in Quebec: A Longitudinal Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

offer readers policy recommendations on helping abused children. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1: I found that sections 2 & 3 should be re‐organized and be shortened. It may be easier for the readers if the authors define properly the mixture of regression model and the class‐ membership equation first before moving to the computation of the GINI and of the Polarization of subgroups. Sections 2.1 and 2.2 are too long and can be significantly reduced. In section 2.1 the authors assume the condition u_k > u_j, but this does not appear anywhere else in the calculation of the mixture of regression model. After equation (10) all the other equations are not numbered.

 

Response 1.1: Unfortunately, it appears that the reviewer is providing comments to a different article. We did not conduct a regression model, compute a GINI coefficient, include polarization of subgroups in our model, have subsections, or include numbered equations. Hopefully the comments can be redirected toward the appropriate authors.

 

Point 2: The probability for a given country h to be in a class k should be the proportion of observations (households) in country h that belong to the income class k. On page 9, the first equation (it would be easier for the reader if the equation is numbered) is not exactly the proportion of people because the authors take the sum of the probability. The interpretation of the equation in not obvious. Normally, after estimating a mixture of regression model we have for each observation its estimated probabilities to be classified into the different classes identified. What is often done is to classify a given observation into the class where its estimated probability is higher. In many software this is also the method used that gives us the proportion of people in each of the classes. The authors should explain the equation on page 9 and how to interpret it. Alternatively, they may use the proportion approach which will make the interpretation easier.

Response 1.2: Similar to above, this comment appears to be responding to a different article. Accordingly, we are unable to incorporate the input into our manuscript revisions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper which sheds light on the childhood prevalence of involvement with the child protection system. However, there are several issues that need to be further addressed before publication. Please find my comments below. Hope the authors find them helpful.

1. The authors conducted a thorough literature review. However, the authors need to explicitly state what research question they will ask or what hypothesis they will make.

2. Adding subheadings in the introduction will be helpful.

3. The current result section needs to be further developed.  

4. Although it might not have been the aim of the study, it would have been interesting to see gender differences among those children who were reported to the child protection system. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

This is an interesting paper which sheds light on the childhood prevalence of involvement with the child protection system. However, there are several issues that need to be further addressed before publication. Please find my comments below. Hope the authors find them helpful.

1. The authors conducted a thorough literature review. However, the authors need to explicitly state what research question they will ask or what hypothesis they will make.

Response 2.1: We appreciate this comment and have added in the final subsection of the introduction an explicit statement of the research question and hypothesis.

2. Adding subheadings in the introduction will be helpful.

Response 2.2: We completely agree with this suggestion and have added four subsections with headings in the introduction.

3. The current result section needs to be further developed.  

Response 2.3: We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion to further develop the results section. While it is difficult to know precisely what would improve the section without specific details from the reviewer, we have conducted our own review of the section and attempted to develop it further. Accordingly, we have added more detail related to the breakdown of prevalence by age to point the reader toward more granular patterns we noticed in the data. Beyond these revisions, we hope that the Discussion section is appropriate for exploring the implications of the overall findings presented in the Results section.

4. Although it might not have been the aim of the study, it would have been interesting to see gender differences among those children who were reported to the child protection system

Response 2.4: We appreciate this comment. While prior studies we have conducted in Quebec have not shown signficiant gender differences, we agree that an analysis of prevalence according to gender could be informative. We did not include gender in the present review as it is the first in a series of distinct prevalence analyses, which is providing an overview of childhood prevalence in the jurisdiction. In subsequent analyses we plan to consider how socioeconomic status and neighbourhood factors relate to prevalence, and we may include gender in a future analysis.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The introduction section is thorough. However, more emphasis is laid on how the dataset was collected and less emphasis is placed on the method that triggers the analysis of the dataset. It is not obvious which method is employed and what are the characteristics of the utilized method. The results appear to be the outcome of a specific analysis which lacks substantial methodological ground.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

The introduction section is thorough. However, more emphasis is laid on how the dataset was collected and less emphasis is placed on the method that triggers the analysis of the dataset. It is not obvious which method is employed and what are the characteristics of the utilized method. The results appear to be the outcome of a specific analysis which lacks substantial methodological ground.

Response 3.1: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment regarding the opportunity to elaborate on the method. We have made substantive edits to the method section in response to this comment. Specifically, we have clarified the utility of the previously validated method of using survival table analysis to determine cumulative childhood risk of child protection involvement. In doing so, we moved one method-heavy paragraph from the introduction to the method section as it helps frame and justify the analytical approach.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Now, the method is well grounded.