Study Measures

Measures will be restricted to minimize the burden on participants. Demographics collected will include details of income and occupational engagement. Economic information including healthcare data, work time/productivity data, and intervention establishment/delivery data will also be collected. Past and recent psychiatric history will also be assessed. Information concerning the outcome of the pregnancy will be collected 13 weeks post-baseline. The EPDS [54] will be used to assess perinatal distress and the four-item Social Support Survey [55] will measure satisfaction with social support. The Assessment of Quality of Life-8 Dimensions (AQol-8D) [56] will be used to assess quality of life, and relationship satisfaction will be measured by the Couples Satisfaction Index [57].

Three measures were designed specifically for this study. These measures were created to be brief, as to minimize time burden on participants, and designed to directly measure certain program components. Self-efficacy over the initial 13 weeks of child-rearing, and providing support to a partner (ie, feeding your baby, putting your baby to sleep, settling your baby, providing support to your partner), will be assessed on an 11-point scale. The scale increases in 10-point increments, and ranges from 0 (not at all confident) to 100 (extremely confident). Current satisfaction with participants’ parenting role and skills, and with relationships and social support (ie, relationship with their partner, support received from and given to their partner, practical and emotional support received from others), will be rated on a similar 11-point scale from 0 (not at all satisfied) to 100 (extremely satisfied). The same rating scale will be used for program satisfaction at 13 weeks post-baseline (ie, overall, relevance, usefulness, how easy it was to find what they wanted). Timing of the assessments is presented in Table 2.

Study measures and timing.

Both Baby Steps programs automatically collect program use data that are summarized into engagement variables (number of logins, module pages viewed, number of plans made, number of photos uploaded to the Scrapbook, and total time spent on the module pages).