Barriers and Facilitators to the Participation of Pregnant Women in Clinical Research: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review

Objectives

Pregnant women had a large demand for diagnosis and treatment, but the clinical research was not sufficient, and there were many barriers for pregnant women to participate in clinical research. This study aimed to systematically identify these barriers and facilitators, map them with Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) and Behavior Change Techniques (BCTs) to inform the development of interventions promoting pregnant women's involvement in clinical research.

Methods

This was a mixed-methods systematic review. PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang, VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and related references were searched. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies exploring barriers and facilitators to pregnant women's participation in clinical trials were included. The barriers and facilitators were extracted, after transforming the quantitative data into qualitative data, all qualitative data were used to thematic synthesis. The identified barriers and facilitators were mapped into TDF and BCTs.

Results

A total of 103 studies (66 qualitative, 24 quantitative, and 13 mixed-methods) were included. Three main themes were formed: personal factors, environmental factors and research characteristics, with identified barriers and facilitators within each theme. “Knowledge,” “Environmental Context and Resources,” and “Beliefs about Consequences” were the main domains where barriers and facilitators identified by pregnant women and researchers were mapped in TDF. Additionally, the barriers and facilitators identified by pregnant women also mapped on “Social Influences” and “Goals.” “Instruction on how to perform a behavior,” “restructuring the physical environment,” “salience of consequences,” “social support (unspecified),” “goal setting (outcome)” were the main BCTs identified based on barriers and facilitators.

Conclusions

The barriers and facilitators to clinical research participation identified in this study involved three main themes of personal, environmental, and research characteristics, which mainly mapped to five TDF domains. Based on these barriers and facilitators, 23 BCTs were identified. Future research should focus on developing behavior change interventions, assessing their efficacy and implementability.