Informationssökning under graviditet
en kvalitativ studie om gravida kvinnors informationssökning via sociala kontakter
The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of howsocial contacts can serve as information sources for pregnantwomen. Furthermore, we wanted to examine how women?scontext influences their information seeking and the barriers thatcan occur during information seeking. The theoretical frameworkis founded on Tom Wilson's model of information needs as contextdependent, and Pamela J. McKenzie's model of informationpractices in accounts of everyday-life information seeking. Inorder to answer our questions, eight qualitative interviews withpregnant women were conducted. Four were expecting their firstchild and the other four were pregnant for the second time. Theempirical material was compared and divided into nine categories.By analyzing their context and statements about their informationseeking, we could demonstrate how parts of their context affecttheir information seeking and what women usually do when theyuse social contacts as an information source. The results show thatmost women use people who have personal experience ofpregnancy as information source. Information is mainly sought byactively seeking or getting information by proxy from their socialcontacts. They were interested in knowing how other women hadexperienced pregnancy. The women in this study wanted to knowmore about how other women felt, rather than to seek medicalfacts. Furthermore, we found several barriers that preventedwomen from seeking information, such as lack of useful socialcontacts and time. In addition, the issue is a sensitive and apersonal topic, and personal and cultural differences were alsomentioned.