Overall comment

The study addresses smoking which is a high-ranking population health issue across the globe. The
introduction and study leave much to be desired.

This is an exploratory/descriptive study; it only assessed the prevalence and attitudes toward
smoking. It is devoid of a theoretical framework, hypothesis formulation (and testing) and
justification of the selection of variables just to mention a few. Hence, the study did not present the
determinants of smoking that can be targeted and addressed in programmatic interventions.

Given the claim that it is a cross-sectional epidemiological study, the methods section is too scanty.
It can hinder a reader from sufficiently assessing the reliability and validity of the survey
instruments, sample size and sampling, quality of data, the data cleaning and analysis. Some parts of
the study are disjointed for instance, the results and tables. No information addressed ethical
considerations. The manuscript should also be thoroughly proofread to correct a few grammatical
errors. A complete overhauling of the work is needed.

Specific comments

Topic: Prevalence should precede determinants

Abstract

Line 6-8: Kindly include that you also aimed to examine the determinants.

Line 9-12: Indicate the sample size of each target group. Specify the statistical methods used and for
what variables.

Line 20-21: Is this increase between years, year-specific or relative to the females? Are there
differences in the prevalence of smoking (and smoking history i.e., ex-smoker) by other
characteristics/variables?

Line 23-26: What does dependency score more? This does not reflect in your methods

Line 26-32: The conclusion and recommendation do not align with the results, it does not hinge on
the need for awareness, education, and other interventions on the prevalence of smoking and the
determinants.

Introduction

The introduction needs to be expanded. The author can start by thinking around the following area:
What is concerning about the issue of smoking in Morocco? What is the situation like across and
within universities in Morocco? Are there socio-demographic, economic, ethnic, and regional
differentials? What other factors have studies linked to smoking among university students in
Morocco? What are the unanswered questions? What is known and unknown about university staff
in Morocco and why should we bother to know? Why focus on the Polydisciplinary Faculty of Taza
(FPT), Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University of Fez? Any theoretical framework to strengthen the
study?
Materials and methods

Kindly include more information for the following:

Study area, sample size calculation method/formula and statistical power consideration, sample size
(include whether sample allocation or equal sampling of each FPT was done and justify this),
adjustment for non-response rate, finite population correction and final sample size.

Was the sample size calculated for 2012 and 2018?

Include the sampling technique(s) and procedure.

Why were data collected in 2012 and 2018 and different months?

Include whether questionnaires were pre-tested/ piloted, reliability and validity tests.

Create a sub-section on measures which will describe your explanatory and outcome variables.

Did you collect similar information from students and staff?

What are semi-open questions?

Include a sub-section on data analysis and provide sufficient information including missing values,
don't know, semi-open questions and how they were treated including some justifications.

No information about the variables in the Ttest and Chi-square analyses.

Line 4: Remove citation.

Line 5: Use categorical variables instead of qualitative variables.

Line 6-9: What variables necessitated the use of mean, median and standard deviation and why?
What method of dispersion did you use to further describe the median? I did not see where you
used median in your analysis.

Line 9-11: Was this comparison for the outcome variable? Clarify.

Line 11-13: Did you compare each explanatory categorical variable and outcome variable
separately? clarify.

Results:

This section is only results, not discussion. It should be rewritten because it is difficult to read. It is
difficult to link the interpretations to their appropriate tables.

There is no information about the precision/reliability of the estimated prevalence of smoking.

A table describing the outcome variable and other variables of interest should be presented before
the cross-tabulations.

There were no results from Ttest and Chisquare tests.

Some tables were not presented. Some tables, like Tables 2 and 4, have similar variables but
dissimilar figures, why? Tables can be carefully combined to eliminate redundancy.

There should be consistency in interpretation. When interpretation is done among students and
staff respectively, this should be consistent rather than disrupting the flow of the narrative with
some student versus teacher comparisons. There is no proper paragraphing as well, for instance, in
the section “smoking prevalence”. After these have been implemented, there will be flow, the
results can be easily read, and the discussion can be properly assessed.

Tables: They should be perused again to ensure that words are properly spelt e.g., male instead of
“mal’ under gender. Some variable names and groups are not informative, clarify what “secondhand
smoke” means. Clarify what “Does not impregnate with smoke odor” means as a reason to stop
smoking. Remove the bullets from the tables. Use one decimal place consistently for percentages.

Line 32-34: The coefficient of variation did not reflect in the materials and methods section. Besides,
this is only useful for interval/ratio level variables rather than categorical (marital status). What
makes a coefficient of 12 homogenous? Instead, an index of qualitative variation may be used to
check diversity, though this must have been stated in your material and methods section.