“I Thought It Was Better to Be Safe Than Sorry”: Factors Influencing Parental Decisions on HPV and Other Adolescent Vaccinations for Students with Intellectual Disability and/or Autism in New South Wales, Australia
, Christiane Klinner 1, Alexandra Young 1, Iva Strnadová 4,5, Horas Wong 6,7, Cassandra Vujovich-Dunn 8, Christy E. Newman 7, Cristyn Davies 9,10, S. Rachel Skinner 9, Margie Danchin 11,12, Sarah Hynes 13 and Rebecca Guy 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see attached file for my review.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Overall, the English language usage in the text is perfectly fine; a couple small error/issues (which caused me confusion) are mentioned in my review.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn this mauscript, the authors explore the factors believed to influence parental decision-making regarding vaccine uptake for students with intellectual disability and/or on the autism spectrum attending special schools in New South Wales, Australia. They explore the perspective of all stakeholders involved in the program. While the manuscript is interesting, during the review process several concerns have raised:
1) Small sample size of only 50 participants, including only 6 parents of adolescents with disabilities. Potential risk of non-responden bias.
2) The study design was cross-sectional, capturing a snapshot of views and experiences at a single point in time. Longitudinal data would provide more robust insights into changes in attitudes and behaviors over time
3) The findings are specific to the context of special schools in New South Wales, Australia. This context-specific focus limits the ability to generalize the results to other regions or types of schools
4) Bias risk: lower number of opposed to certain vaccines (and this is indeed a key group) who could have offered a more balanced perspective
There are still myths and misconceptions of vaccines (no need of HPV vaccines due to low sexual activity, wrong believe about autism and vaccination)
5) The manuscript do not address unmet needs such as Who is responsible for educating parents about vaccines?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsEndorsed
