Approximately 8 percent of all pregnant women experience physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse during pregnancy. In September 1994, findings from the National Pregnancy and Health Survey of women who recently delivered indicated 5 percent had abused illegal drugs and 18 percent had abused alcohol while pregnant. Less information is available about the interaction of how they experience, cope and protect themselves from battering and abuse for the purpose of developing effective prevention programs and interventions. This competing continuation application for a two-year project to conduct secondary analyses of two NIDA-funded data sets will help to fill this information gap. The first study was entitled, """"""""An Ethnographic Study of Pregnancy and Drug Use."""""""" The second focuses on women's victimization, and is currently being conducted.
The specific aims for the proposed secondary analyses are as follows: (1) Conduct a secondary analysis of data from two qualitative studies by developing a topology of drug use and victimization during pregnancy; (2) Categorize significant life events using a time line data reduction instrument for all 221 life history interviews; and (3) Analyze the resulting types/time life histories to uncover the interactions of significant life events associated with variations in drug use, and violence and pregnancy. Funding for this proposed project will allow integration of the two data sets, expanding the number of cases available for analysis without considerable expense of further data collection. A typological or case analysis approach enables the analyst to investigate the interaction of drug use, pregnancy, and victimization in the experiences of individual women. By comparing women across types, the PI would be able to identify significant factors which contribute to or ameliorate the effects of drug use, victimization, and problematic pregnancies and child births. Findings from these analyses will have implications for planning public health intervention programs and for discovering violence and drug use reduction strategies.
