The Development of Empowerment Program for Adolescent Pregnant Women

Abstract

The research and development aimed to 1) explore the situations, issues, and needs among adolescent pregnant women, 2) develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an empowerment program on preterm birth, low birth weight, role of motherhood, and stress in adolescent pregnant women, and 3) assess the validity of the empowerment program for adolescent pregnant women. This study consisted of three phases:1) qualitative data was obtained from 24 adolescent pregnant women to explore the situations, issues, and care of adolescent pregnant women, 2) quantitative data was collected to evaluate the effectiveness of program from 212 adolescent pregnant women in maternity units in a hospital, Ubon Ratchathani, and 3) 30 experts assessed the validity of the empowerment program. The research instruments included in-depth interviews form, and questionnaires with reliability values ranging from 0.77 to 0.92. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis and quantitative data was employed using repeated measure ANOVA and the Chi-square statistics.

The results indicated that adolescent pregnant participants initially had negative attitudes towards the pregnancy. Then participants accepted the pregnancy and transition towards positive pregnancy perspectives. Compared with the control group, newborn infants of adolescent pregnant participants in experimental group had significantly decreased preterm birth rate and low birth weight (p< .01). and adolescent pregnant women in experimental group had significantly increased motherhood role and decreased stress (p<.001, p<.01). When compared with the mean score of each stage and follow-up stage had a significantly high score (p<.001). The empowerment program improved outcomes for adolescent pregnant women.