Perceived Barriers to Accessing Pregnancy-Related Health Information Among Married Adolescent Women: A Qualitative Study in Iran.

Study Objective: To date, no study has reported barriers to accessing pregnancy-related health information among married women younger than the age of 19 years. Indeed, the voice of the girls being married is absent in the literature. We sought to explore the barriers to accessing pregnancy-related health information from the perspective of Iranian married adolescent women.

Design: Qualitative study.

Setting: The research was conducted in Mashhad city (health care centers) and Shahrood County (a maternity teaching hospital, and urban/rural health care centers) in Iran.

Participants, Interventions, And Main Outcome Measures: Twenty-four married adolescent women aged 14-19 years were recruited through purposive sampling. Individual in-depth interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using conventional content analysis. Prolonged engagement with participants, maximum-variation sampling, member checking, peer deferring, and external audit were used to enhance the rigor of the study.

Results: The results showed 3 categories: "structural barriers," "individual barriers," and "sociocultural barriers." The structural barriers category consisted of 2 subcategories, namely, poor quality of education and counseling in the health care centers, and transportation barriers. The 2 subcategories of the individual barriers category consisted of affective barriers and cognitive barriers. The sociocultural barriers category included the following 2 subcategories: husband's decision-making power and fear of being labeled infertile.

Conclusion: The barriers identified in this study should be considered when designing educational interventions for married adolescent women. Moreover, further research is needed to enhance current knowledge on this topic.