Original Paper
doi:10.2196/36209
Keywords
Round 1 Review
General Comments
This is a well-written paper [1] focusing on a very relevant topic. More details should be provided about the statistical approach used.
Specific Comments
It is a fact that the sample size is small and that is probably the reason why the Fisher exact test was used. Nonetheless, no explanation or rationale for the decision is given.
Major Comments
1. The sample size of this study is small and that seems to be the reason for using the Fisher exact test; however, more rationale should be provided for this decision, to explain if the assumptions required to perform the chi-square test are complied to or not. Another option for small samples is to use the Monte Carlo Simulation; why have you decided not to use that instead of the Fisher exact test?
Minor Comments
2. For such a small sample, you have a lot of categories pertaining to the number of patients treated (Table 2). In fact, these categories contributed little to provide significant results; have you tried to run the analysis with fewer categories? Can you please explain the rationale for having so many categories for a small sample?
3. I understand that the sample is small, and you are limited by it and by the characteristics of the variables, but have you tried to explore other types of statistical analysis and variables, using, for example, age or gender, with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test rates, etc?
4. In Table 2, it is mentioned that the values for P<.05 are in bold; one value is .05 and it is bolded—are you talking about rounding in terms of the number of decimals? Was this result statistically significant according to SPSS?
Abbreviations
PCR: polymerase chain reaction
Reference
- Frisch S, Jones S, Willis J, Sinert R. COVID-19 Infection and Symptoms Among Emergency Medicine Residents and Fellows in an Urban Academic Hospital Setting: Cross-sectional Questionnaire Study. JMIRx Med 2022. [CrossRef]
Edited by E Meinert; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 05.01.22; accepted 05.01.22; published 27.01.22
Copyright©Jorge Tavares. Originally published in JMIRx Med (https://med.jmirx.org), 27.01.2022.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIRx Med, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://med.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.