Browsing by Subject "raskausajan ravitsemus"

Aims The aim of this qualitative study was to research nutrition information needs, and use of different sources of nutrition information, during pregnancy. The second aim was to study the user experiences of the smart phone application First 1000 Days by pregnant women. First 1000 Days is an application designed for women planning pregnancy, pregnant women, and to mothers and other caretakers of children aged up to two years. The application provides research and nutrition recommendations based nutrition information. My research questions were: • Which factors define the information needs, and usage of various sources of information during pregnancy? • How was the First 1000 Days mobile application experienced as a source of pregnancy-related nutrition information? Methods The research data was collected by interviewing a group of pregnant women. I interviewed eight women between June 2016 and January 2017. The method used for the sampling was discretionary sampling. My criterions for selected women were pregnancy, willingness and possibility to use the First 1000 Days application, and being in good health. My sample of women were aged between 29 – 41 years (mean 34 years) and their pregnancy in weeks was 8 – 37 weeks (mean 22 weeks). The interviews were based on a theme interview method, that consisted of four different main themes: pregnancy, nutrition during pregnancy, nutrition information needs and the usage of the First 1000 Days. The collected data was analyzed with theory-driven content analysis. Results and conclusions The research revealed that the nutrition information needs of the interviewed women during pregnancy is influenced by the factors related to pregnancy itself, for example diet prior to pregnancy, level of nutrition knowledge, social expectations about pregnancy and the physical symptoms caused by being pregnant. In addition, the changes made to the diet, for example avoidance of foods with associated risk and health aspects of the diet, also had an impact to the nutrition information needs. Women being pregnant for the first time, and those in their early stages of pregnancy, had most needs to increase their nutrition knowledge. Based on my research, the women used different sources of nutrition information, such as child health clinic, the internet and printed material on nutrition. The internet as the source was popular among the women, due to easy and fast access to nutrition information. Sources based on nutrition research were found to be most reliable. Most convenient sources were named to be child health care clinics and digital information found from a reliable source. The women found it important to be able to get answers to nutrition related questions given their personal situation with the pregnancy. The experiences of using the First 1000 Days application were defined by the general information needs during pregnancy, usage of other sources providing related information, trust towards the application and how easy it was to use. The information in the application is in English, which was found to have negative impact on the reliability of the information and usage of the application. My research revealed that smart phone applications give one usable channel to provide pregnant women the nutrition information they are looking for. There are many pregnancy related applications available in the market, however they have varying reliability of the provided information. Child health clinics could be the place to give guidance on which applications offer reliable, research based nutrition information to pregnant women. This way the application would complement the information available from the child health clinic itself.