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Engaging pregnant women in observational research: A qualitative exploratory study

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posted on 2023-09-11, 02:28 authored by E Muggli, H Curd, C Nagle, Della ForsterDella Forster, J Halliday
Background: Recruitment of pregnant women to population health research can be challenging, especially if the research topic is sensitive. While many pregnant women may be inherently interested in research about pregnancy, there is the possibility that the nature and timing of the project may give rise to anxiety in some women, especially if the topic is sensitive or it brings about new awareness of potential pregnancy complications. Research staff undertaking recruitment need to be skilled at strategies to manage the environment, and have well developed communication and interpersonal skills to explain and promote the study and facilitate each woman's informed decision-making regarding participation. However, the skills needed by recruitment staff to successfully engage pregnant women with a research topic are not well understood. This study aimed to address this evidence gap by providing insight into the dynamics between a pregnant woman and recruitment staff at the time of the offer to participate in an observational study about alcohol use in pregnancy. Methods: Naturalistic inquiry guided a qualitative exploratory descriptive approach. Experienced recruitment staff from the Asking Questions about Alcohol in Pregnancy (AQUA) study (Muggli et al., BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 14:302, 2014) participated in individual semi-structured interviews and were asked about their experiences and approaches to engaging pregnant women. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using inductive content analysis. Results: Pregnant women brought with them an inherent interest or disinterest in alcohol research, or in research in general, which formed the basis for engagement. Women responded favourably to the invitation to participate being delivered without pressure, and as part of a two-way conversation. Engagement with a sensitive topic such as alcohol use in pregnancy was facilitated by a non-judgmental and non-targeted approach. Influences such as privacy, distractions, partner's opinion, time factors and level of clinical support either facilitated or hindered a woman's engagement with the research. Conclusions: These results provide an in-depth explanation of barriers and enablers to recruitment of pregnant women in antenatal clinics to studies that may inform strategies and the training of recruitment staff.

Funding

This work is supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council [grant number 1011070] and the Victorian State Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program. The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

History

Publication Date

2018-08-16

Journal

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Volume

18

Issue

1

Article Number

334

Pagination

7p.

Publisher

Springer Nature

ISSN

1471-2393

Rights Statement

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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