Reviewed on July 11, 2015
Source

    © 2015 the Reviewer.

Content of review 2, reviewed on July 21, 2015

Review of the revised paper I acknowledge that authors have made some changes in the manuscript; however, major comments made in the previous review are pending. An additional concern regards the new piece of the conclusion which is added in the revised version. Authors speculate about 'influential theme' while qualitative studies are not intended to make causal inferences. To explain why this is important, I will try to illustrate this with an observation of radio journalists asking their audience to report whether new tobacco health warnings, or tobacco tax increases, or smoke-free policies have encouraged their quitting. Usually people call and say 'No, I still smoke' or 'No, I smoke even more now'. However, this only reflects how people react to the question, not how they change (or do not change) their smoking behavior. Would you rely on such radio interviews? Aren't they similar to what you conclude from your FGD?

One additional minor comment: please read in the abstract 'Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with youths in Singapore who smoked in youth friendly and accessible locations.' and you will probably want to rewrite this because it is written that they smoked in friendly locations.

Source

    © 2015 the Reviewer (CC BY 4.0).

References

    Mythily, S., Shazana, S., Restria, F., Pratika, S., Louisa, P., Ajit, V. J., Ann, C. S. 2015. Perspectives on Smoking Initiation and Maintenance: A Qualitative Exploration among Singapore Youth. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.