Designing a digital intervention to help when choosing contraception
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Designing a digital intervention to help when choosing contraception
IRAS ID
185793
Contact name
Judith Stephenson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UCL
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 6 months, 2 days
Research summary
Many young women think that their contraceptive choices are limited to pills or condoms, but there are other options (including implants, injections and intrauterine methods) that are at least 20 times more effective at preventing unintended pregnancy. So we propose to design an interactive digital intervention (IDI) to improve informed choice of contraceptive method and help women choose the method that best suits their needs. Interactive means asking for information so that advice can be personally tailored to each woman. A digital intervention is an online interactive source of information, available on computers and mobile devices.
In order to design an IDI that is fit for purpose, we want to hold group discussions with women aged 15 - 30 years to find out what features an IDI should have to make it most useful to them in choosing a method of contraception. We plan to recruit women from five sites - a GP practice, a specialist contraceptive service, an abortion service, a maternity service (to ask women about choosing contraception after the baby is born) and a community pharmacy which is where most women go to get the emergency pill.
(After completing this study, the information we obtain from interviewing women will be combined with information from health care professionals and from other research to help us design a promising IDI that we will test out at a later stage).
We are focusing on IDI because 1) young women are likely to turn to digital resources for information about contraception 2) studies from the USA suggest that IDI can improve contraceptive choice and continuation, but 3) no NHS services are using these approaches yet and 4) our team has a lot of expertise in developing and testing digital interventions for sexual health.REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1802
Date of REC Opinion
10 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion