The Effect of Social Media Support on Healthy Lifestyle Behaviours

Summary

The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of a programme to improve healthy lifestyle behaviours based on the Health Belief Model to be offered through Instagram, a social media platform. For this purpose, it is aimed to produce content containing accurate and evidence-based information for pregnant women on social media, to ensure that pregnant women can access the right information quickly and easily, to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviours, to test the effectiveness of the social media platform for the adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviours and to contribute to the formation of a healthier family and society in the long term. In addition, this study is aimed to create a model for the midwifery profession to benefit from the new opportunities created by internet technology outside the clinical field in service delivery.

The population of the study will consist of women with primiparous pregnancies in the first and second trimester. Women who agree to participate in the study will be randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. In addition to routine care and counselling, pregnant women in the experimental group will receive support for developing healthy lifestyle behaviours through Instagram, while the control group will receive only standard pregnancy care and counselling services approved by the Ministry of Health.

General Hypothesis of the Study:

H1: The Healthy Lifestyle Behaviours development programme offered through the social media platform Instagram is effective in providing a positive development on healthy lifestyle behaviours in pregnant women.

Conditions

• Social Media in Developing Healthy Lifestyle Behaviours in Pregnant Women

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

counselling

After the participants in the experimental group signed the 'Informed Consent Form', the Instagram addresses actively used by the pregnant women participating in the study will be taken, the Instagram account created by the researcher will be shared with the pregnant women in the experimental group, the participants will be ensured to follow the Instagram address created by the researcher and join the Instagram DM group. After the participation to the platform is completed, the visibility of the participants in the account will be checked. After the visibility of all participants is ensured, pre-tests created in Google Forms and uploaded to WhatsApp and Instagram DM group will be applied.

OTHER

Control

After the 'Informed Consent Form' is signed by the pregnant women in the control group, the telephone numbers of the participants will be taken and recorded in the directory. Participants will also be asked to save the researcher's phone number. After being registered in the phone book, questionnaires and scales will be shared via WhatsApp and asked to answer the pre-tests prepared in Google Forms. Pregnant women who answer will be asked to return with a WhatsApp message in the form of 'I answered' or 'I sent'. The control group will not be trained on Instagram, but will be provided with standardised medical care established by the Turkish Ministry of Health during the follow-up period.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Istanbul University - Cerrahpasa

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Neslihan Özcan, Prof. Dr. · Istanbul Univercity-Cerrahpasa

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

49 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-09-02

Primary Completion

2026-04-01

Completion

2026-05-30

Countries

• Turkey (Türkiye)

Study Locations