JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

This project aims at understanding Cambodian female garment factory workers reproductive health needs after medical abortion (MA) from a multi-disciplinary and mixed methods perspective. The methods proposed are interviews and participant observation among factory workers, health providers and mobile phone providers; linguistic analysis of relevant data (interview transcripts, online sources and other fieldwork material); digital methods to understand what kind of information about MA exists online in Cambodia, and how accessible/accessed it is by the targeted population. These methods will be used to explore from a holistic perspective how female factory workers seek and share MA and health-related information, how they use their mobile phones for this and other purposes, what cultural challenges exist around reproductive health and how they might be magnified or mitigated by mobile phones, linguistic challenges around healthcare and mobile phone use. While the main purpose of the research is to combine multi-disciplinary methods, theories, and expertise to gain new, culturally-grounded insights into family planning, MA and in general health-seeking behaviors in Cambodia, the findings could help inform the development of a relevant intervention to support comprehensive post-abortion care, whose uptake in the country is very low. The research protocol outlines the rationale for the project, the planning and details for the different phases and methods, and ethics considerations and challenges. The section on ethics has been edited from the original protocol to include parts that were written in response to ethical panels’ requests for clarification, which illuminate the challenges of doing multi-disciplinary research that draws from different understandings of the role of researchers vis-à-vis research participants.