Author ’ s response to reviews Title : Associations of childhood , maternal and household dietary patterns with childhood stunting in Ethiopia : Proposing an alternative and plausible dietary analysis method to dietary diversity scores Authors :

--->Please name the patterns you observe (dairy, vegetable, fruit; 'traditional') in the abstract.  Correction made. Background: --->You say analysis of dietary data have remained challenging for various reasons. Please specify at least some of those reasons.  We included the following statement: Background (line: 62-65) “Although there are well-established methods, collation and analysis of dietary data have remained challenging in low-income countries (LICs) for various reasons, including high costs, lack of centralized platforms for dietary data, little investment in research, low capacity and technical complexity [6]. .....” Methods: --->Give details on how you assessed and labeled household food security.  We added details on how food insecurity status was assessed and labelled. We also provided a citation for methods of food insecurity assessment. Methods (Line: 190-196) “.....Nine Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) generic questions were used with a dichotomized response (0=no/1=yes) to assess food insecurity [9]. Each of the questions were asked with a recall period of four weeks (30 days). If a respondent answers “yes” to any of the above nine questions, frequency-of-occurrence questions were asked to determine whether the condition happened rarely (1=once or twice), sometimes (2=three to ten times) or often (3=more than ten times). The insecurity status was categorized into four groups (secured, mild, moderate, and severe) using the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) algorithm [9].” Results: --->'More than half ... had a DDS less than or equal to the median.' That's the definition of median...not a result.  Thank you. We made the correction. Discussion: --->'Dietary patterns represent the whole picture of eating habits'. Dietary patterns, in the absence of quantities, cannot tell the whole story. Rephrase what you're trying to say. They may represent more than a dietary diversity score, but they don't represent the whole picture.  We made correction accordingly. Discussion (line: 305-306) “Dietary patterns show a better picture of eating habits compared to DDSs by reflecting mainly the behavioural aspect of food consumption that has a synergistic effect on health.....” Typos --->prevalence ration  Correction made. --->food secured households  Correction made --->no significant between  Correction made --->dietary patterns z score  Correction made