Caroline Bäckström
Senior Lecturer in Nursing
The research project Digital Parental Support research project was initiated in 2019 as a pilot project collaboration and includes researchers from the research group FamCeH at the University of Skövde (the School of Health Sciences), researchers from the School of Information Science at the University of Skövde, the Labor and Postnatal Ward at Skövde Skaraborgs Hospital and Antenatal Clinics Skövde and, Västra Götalandsregionen.
The project design is qualitative and includes data from interviews with parents and professional caregivers on perceptions and experiences from receiving digital parental support.
In 2019 the project received a grant from Chalmers University of Technology. The funds are used to develop a digital parental support aiming to increase expecting parents' feelings of preparedness for childbirth and parenthood.
The developed Digital Parental Support application is designed as an interactive story game – The Childbirth Journey (Swedish: Förlossningsresan), where users are able to choose from alternative scenarios and thereby decide which information they take part of. Development of the interactive story game is ongoing and expected to be completed at the end of 2020. Collection of research data begins in 2020.
Related project – Interplay
Another research project related to the larger research project Digital Parental Support is the 'Interplay' (Swedish: 'Samspel') project. Within this project a Danish digital parental support application 'Samspil' is translated into a Swedish version 'Samspel'. This type of support aims to strengthen the parental couples in their parental couple relationship and parenthood.
The project consists of both qualitative and quantitative designs. The qualitative part of the study includes interviews with parental couples to explore parents' and professionals' experiences from using the 'Samspel' application. The quantitative part of the study consist of repeated questionnaires and the parental couples will be followed from pregnancy to six months after labor. Development of the 'Samspel' is ongoing and data collection begins in 2020.
Project Leader
Senior Lecturer in Nursing
