Response to the Letter to the Editor: Clarifications on Literature Review and Study Contributions

Dear Editor,We would like to express our gratitude for forwarding the letter regarding our article to the Editor. This has provided us with the opportunity to address the reasons for not citing the study by Öztürk et al. In the following section, we present our responses to the points raised in their letter:The data collection period for the study by Öztürk et al. was between June 1, 2022, and July 15, 2022. The submission and acceptance dates of the article are 15 August 2022 and 28 October 2022, respectively (1). In our study, the literature review and data collection phase ended on 2 August 2022 at 17:30, after which the analysis phase began and was extended to include the 2022 dissertations. The analysis phase was not only a cross-sectional analysis, but software coding was done to create a real-time dynamic database architecture in which the findings would be automatically updated as new data were entered into the system. All entries and digital footprints in our database have log records to verify this timeline. Our preliminary analyses were presented as a conference paper at the 6th International Public Health Congress held the same year, and we subsequently included new theses published in 2022 as we completed advanced analyses in 2023 (2). Thus, the literature review for our study was conducted before the publication of Öztürk et al.’s article, which had not been released during our review phase. By its publication, our study had progressed to the analysis stage.