EXPECTING Study - Exploring thinking in pregnancy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
EXPloring pattErns of Common ThinkING styles in pregnancy
IRAS ID
291313
Contact name
Pauline Slade
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Research Summary:
This study aims to investigate cognitive processes associated with fear of childbirth (FOC). FOC is a phobia-like response to giving birth that causes high levels of distress (Slade, Balling, Sheen, & Houghton, 2019). Fear of childbirth (FOC) is present in both first-time mothers and those who have already given birth. It can also be found in the general population of women who have not given birth and whom are not currently pregnant. As many as 80% of pregnant women will have a mild fear of childbirth and for another 10% of pregnant women, it can be so severe that it will affect their day to day life. There are many different parts of childbirth that can cause women to feel anxious, some include the fear of the pain, being out of control, a fear that harm may come to them or the baby or the fears from a previous traumatic birth.This study is looking for associations between FOC and certain thinking patterns in pregnant women with a range of different levels of FOC. The study will be run online, and participants will be asked to give informed consent online. They were first be asked to answer questions that will show us their levels of FOC. They will then be doing three different tasks online so we can see their thinking patterns. After this, the participants will be asked to answer some questions that will give us an indication of their levels of anxiety, mood, worry and how much they ruminate.
This study was reviewed and approved by the research review committee at the University of Liverpool as part of the clinical doctorate in psychology thesis process. As part of this process it was reviewed by an academic, clinical expert in the field of study and expert by experience.
Lay summary of study results:
Fear of childbirth (FOC) is a phobic-like response about the prospect of giving birth. FOC can have negative implications for women during pregnancy and can impact their birthing experience. Cognitive processing biases (e.g., difficulty disengaging from threatening information, interpreting ambiguous information as threatening, and preferentially recalling threatening content) have previously been found to maintain general anxiety and low mood. To date, there has been no research assessing these attention, interpretation, and memory biases, and their relationship with FOC, in pregnant women. Therefore, in this cross-sectional study, participants who were at least 12 weeks pregnant (n = 116), were recruited through a local hospital trust and they completed tasks assessing attention (this was done using an emotional Stroop task), interpretation (this was done using a scrambled sentences test), and explicit memory (this was done using a recognition task) bias with materials including FOC-related content. They also completed three separate measures of FOC and measures of low mood, general anxiety, worry, and rumination. We found that a negative interpretation bias (but not attention or explicit memory biases) was associated with higher levels of FOC. These findings indicate that women presenting with higher levels of FOC are more likely to demonstrate negative interpretation biases for ambiguous information relating to childbirth, which may inform research developing interventions to support women presenting with FOC.REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/YH/0073
Date of REC Opinion
11 May 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion