1. Cell Phones to Collect Pregnancy Data From Remote Areas in Liberia.
- Author
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Lori, Jody R., Munro, Michelle L., Boyd, Carol J., and Andreatta, Pamela
- Subjects
TRAINING ,MIDWIFERY education ,ABILITY ,ANALYSIS of variance ,CHI-squared test ,CONCEPTUAL structures ,INTELLECT ,LITERACY ,RESEARCH methodology ,NONPARAMETRIC statistics ,PRENATAL care ,PSYCHOLOGY ,RESEARCH funding ,RURAL conditions ,SELF-efficacy ,STATISTICAL hypothesis testing ,T-test (Statistics) ,WIRELESS communications ,WORLD Wide Web ,INFORMATION resources ,THEORY ,DATA analysis ,PRE-tests & post-tests ,DESCRIPTIVE statistics - Abstract
Purpose: To report findings on knowledge and skill acquisition following a 3-day training session in the use of short message service (SMS) texting with non- and low-literacy traditional midwives. Design: A pre- and post-test study design was used to assess knowledge and skill acquisition with 99 traditional midwives on the use of SMS texting for real-time, remote data collection in rural Liberia, West Africa. Methods: Paired sample t-tests were conducted to establish if overall mean scores varied significantly from pre-test to immediate post-test. Analysis of variance was used to compare means across groups. The nonparametric McNemar's test was used to determine significant differences between the pre-test and post-test values of each individual step involved in SMS texting. Pearson's chi-square test of independence was used to examine the association between ownership of cell phones within a family and achievement of the seven tasks. Findings: The mean increase in cell phone knowledge scores was 3.67, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 3.39 to 3.95. Participants with a cell phone in the family did significantly better on three of the seven tasks in the pre-test: 'turns cell on without help' (χ
2 (1) = 9.15, p= .003); 'identifies cell phone coverage' (χ2 (1) = 5.37, p= .024); and 'identifies cell phone is charged' (χ2 (1) = 4.40, p= .042). Conclusions: A 3-day cell phone training session with low- and nonliterate traditional midwives in rural Liberia improved their ability to use mobile technology for SMS texting. Clinical Relevance: Mobile technology can improve data collection accessibility and be used for numerous health care and public health issues. Cell phone accessibility holds great promise for collecting health data in low-resource areas of the world. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2012; 00:0, 1-8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2012
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