NEW SUB-STUDY OF QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGIES

You, the BiSC volunteers, have been collaborating with the project since you were pregnant. Since then we have collected a multitude of samples, both from you and your children, in addition to the information you have also been providing us with the online questionnaires and the face-to-face visits you have made with our neuropsychologists. The compilation of all this information is essential to be able to study the neurodevelopment of children, how the pollutants that surround us affect their correct growth.

In this sub-study it is intended to expand the observer’s gaze towards these data. The data collected through questionnaires allows us to obtain a multitude of information on the socio-economic contexts of our volunteers, in addition to other topics related to mental health and lifestyles. However, this type of data collection does not aim to obtain information that allows us to understand the social and cultural structure that underlies the ways of caring for health and illness.

For this reason, informal interviews will be conducted in the coming weeks with a total of 10 volunteer mothers from the cohort. In these interviews, we will seek to deepen into what is behind the rush of decisions when managing some of the health issues you have been surveyed about during the 4-year phase, such as nutrition and use of devices with screens.

Although this is a very small and limited sub-study, it is intended to demonstrate the contribution that a qualitative type of data collection can offer to an impact project such as BiSC, offering a perspective of the subject’s more complex experience and potentially useful for the research of future implementation policy proposals.

This news has been written by Raquel Barneda, field technician of the BiSC Project.