Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 16, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: May 18, 2018 - Jul 13, 2018
Date Accepted: Nov 12, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A Qualitative Evaluation of Mothers’ Perceptions of a Technology-Based Supportive Educational Parenting Programme
ABSTRACT
Background:
Transitioning into parenthood can be stressful as parents struggle to cope with new parenting responsibilities. Although perinatal care in hospitals aims to improve parental outcomes, there is a general consensus that it is suboptimal and insufficient. Therefore, many studies have designed intervention methods to supplement support for parents during this stressful period. However, studies often focus on parental outcomes as indicators of intervention success and effectiveness. Studies evaluating participants’ experiences and feedback are limited.
Objective:
To examine the experiences and perceptions of participants who participated in the supportive education parenting program intervention study.
Methods:
A qualitative semi-structured interview was conducted with 16 mothers (6 control and 10 intervention) from a randomized controlled trial. The supportive education parenting programme included two phone-based perinatal educational sessions, a phone-based educational session after childbirth, and a one-month postpartum access to a mobile-health application. The interviews were approximately 30 to 60 minutes long, were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim, and analysed using thematic analysis. Study findings were reported according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research checklist.
Results:
Three main themes evaluating mothers’ experiences and perceptions were generated: 1) changed perspective towards parenthood, 2) journey from pregnancy to after birth, and 3) a way forward. Mothers from the intervention group mostly had a good perinatal experience with sufficient support received, which alleviated their emotional wellbeing and increased parenting involvement. Mothers in the control group, although satisfied with the hospital care received, were more stressed and shared a need for professional advice and extra support. Apart from technical enhancements, mothers also requested extended social support during early pregnancy up to one year postpartum, taking into consideration Asian cultural practices.
Conclusions:
Mothers who received the intervention were overall satisfied with the support provided by the technology-based supportive educational parenting program. The success of the educational programme in this study highlights the need for supplementing standard care in hospitals with technology-based educational programmes. Future research should include fathers’ perceptions to attain an in-depth understanding of overall participants’ experiences and needs in the future development of supportive and educational programs. Clinical Trial: ISRCTN48536064
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.