The Effect of Health Education Supported by Digital Storytelling on Maternal Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Newborn Screening

The study will first obtain a list of pregnant women registered with each family physician at the family health centers in city center. This list will include the pregnant women's names, surnames, ages, and contact information. The pregnant women forming the research group will be contacted using the phone numbers obtained from the family health centers. After explaining the subject and importance of the study, they will be asked if they are willing to participate. The list forming the research group will be updated to include only those who volunteer for the study. Then, as a pre-test, an introductory information form and the Maternal Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Newborn Screening Scale will be administered to the individuals in the research group. After the pre-test is completed, the pregnant women in the research group will be assigned to experimental and control groups using stratified randomization according to their age. For this purpose, the pregnant women will be divided into two strata: those aged 18-35 and those over 35. After stratification, four blocks of eight people each were created, forming two separate groups, using the website randomizer.org.

Blinding In the study, the randomization process will be performed by someone other than a member of the research team, ensuring blinding. The experimental and control groups will be coded as A and B, ensuring statistical blinding as the statistician analyzing the data will not know whether the pregnant women are in the experimental or control group. Furthermore, participants will not be informed whether they are in the experimental or control group, ensuring participant blinding. Since the intervention will be performed by the researcher, researcher blinding was not possible. Thus, assignment bias, statistical bias, and reporting bias were prevented.

Outcomes Measures The outcome criterion in the study is the level of knowledge and attitude towards newborn screening. The measurement tool aimed at measuring this criterion is the Maternal Knowledge and Attitude Scale Towards Newborn Screening. The pre-test will be administered through self-report at the family health centers where the interviews with pregnant women are conducted, and the post-test will be administered through face-to-face interviews after the completion of a four-week health education program supported by digital storytelling. Intervention to be Applied to the Control Group: Two interviews will be conducted with the pregnant women in the control group at family health centers, four weeks apart. The pre-test will be administered in the first interview, and the post-test in the last interview. Telephone calls will be made to participants between the first and last weeks for reminder purposes.

Data Analysis The findings of the study will be analyzed in a computer environment. Intention to Treat (ITT) analysis will be performed to complete the missing data in the final test. Paired-sample t-test and independent samples t-test will be used for continuous data showing normal distribution. McNemar test for two dependent groups and chi-square test for two independent groups will be applied to categorical variables.