JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The majority of pregnant youth gain more weight than recommended by the National Academy of Medicine guidelines. Excess weight gain during pregnancy increases the risk of dangerous complications during delivery, including operative delivery and stillbirth, and contributes to the risk of long-term obesity in both mother and child. Little is known regarding youth’s perceptions of and knowledge about weight gain during pregnancy.

Objective:

In this methodological paper, we describe the feasibility and acceptability of three novel data collection and analysis strategies for use with youth (social media posts, text message surveys, semi-structured interviews) to explore their experiences during pregnancy. Mixed methods analysis included natural language processing and thematic analysis.

Methods:

To demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of this novel approach, we used descriptive statistics and thematic qualitative analysis to characterize participation and engagement in the study.

Results:

Recruitment of 54 pregnant women between 16 and 24 years of age occurred from April 2016 to September 2016. All participants completed at least one phase of the study. Semi-structured interviews had the highest rate of completion, yet all three strategies were feasible and acceptable to pregnant youth.

Conclusions:

This paper describes a novel youth-centered strategy of triangulating three sources of mixed methods data to gain a deeper understanding of a health behavior phenomenon among an at-risk population of youth.