Understanding the Role of Misinformation in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in a Rural State

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled "Understanding the Role of Misinformation in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in a Rural State" describes a survey aimed at characterization vaccine hesitancy. 

The study is well design and described, I find it suitable for publication in Vaccines. 

One minor correction: Please add a legend to figure 1 to differentiate between  hesitant (left) and non-hesitant (right) groups.

Good luck 

Author Response

Thank you for the compliment and suggestion to improve the legend for Figure 1 on page 5 in the manuscript.

The authors have modified the legend as follows:

Figure 1. Percentage of responses related to trusted sources of information about COVID-19 vaccines. Hesitant respondents dark blue graph is shown on the left and Not Hesitant respondents light blue graph is shown on the right.

The authors further improved Figure 1 by specifying sample sizes for each group with the addition of new titles.

A spelling and grammar check was completed.

Reviewer 2 Report

This study aimed to describe factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and uptake intention from a sample of Maine residents. This is a very great study. However, more details in the methods are essential to improve the manuscript prior the acceptance for publication.

-Introduction: requires the appropriate hypothesis of study.

-Methods: what is the design of study? How the subjects were interviewed? How the population was selected? What is the sample size calculus?

-Results: To reduce. Due to fact many data were similarly reported in the table and graph, as well as in results section.

Author Response

Thank you for the compliment and suggestions which we have addressed as follows:

Introduction on page 2 in the manuscript: Authors added “This was a descriptive study and no hypothesis was developed or tested.”

The authors addressed methods comments as follows on page 3 in the manuscript:

Design Revision: added 'descriptive study design'[

Recruitment and data collection through methods described for this descriptive study design used a convenience sample of people in Maine and occurred over four months from 27 May 2021 to 21 September 2021.

The authors specified the use of email and social media for recruitment with the help of community partners in the study design.

Subjects Revision: clarified 'no' interviews were conducted

The study design did not include interviews and there were no incentives or gifts for participation. 

Population Selection Revision: added 'convenience sample'

Recruitment and data collection through methods described for this descriptive study design used a convenience sample of people in Maine and occurred over four months from 27 May 2021 to 21 September 2021.

The authors noted sample size was not calculated for this study.

Results Revision

The authors made significant edits to the results section to eliminate details “similarly covered in the table and graph” as noted by the reviewer. See pages 3-5 in the manuscript for tracked changes.

The authors removed numerous references to percentages and types of tests throughout the results section as information is adequately covered in the tables and graphs. Quotes similar in context were also removed to reduce this section as suggested by the reviewer.