Factors Affecting Pregnant Women’s Decision-making and Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors via the Internet

Introduction: This study aims to determine pregnant women’s access to health information and decision-making through the internet, their healthy lifestyle behaviors, and the factors affecting them.
Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in two public hospitals located in the Mediterranean region of Türkiye. The sample consisted of the volunteer pregnant women aged 18 and over. Data were collected using the “Personal Identification Form, Internet Decision-making in Pregnancy Scale, and Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors in Pregnancy Scale,” via face-to-face surveys. Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance, and Bonferroni post hoc tests were used in the analysis of data.
Results: The study included 367 pregnant women. The pregnant women’s decision-making score through the internet was found to be at a medium level (38.00±7.25), while the healthy life behavior score was found to be at a high level (115.47±15.26). Nutrition had the highest sub-dimension mean, while physical activity had the lowest. Variables such as age, education status, income level, number of pregnancies, prenatal education, and health check-ups significantly affected the scale scores (p<0.05).
Discussion and Conclusion: The research results show that individual and environmental variables during pregnancy affect both access to health-related information and lifestyle behaviors. Therefore, it is important to expand prenatal education for pregnant women, provide targeted health counseling to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and direct them to the right digital resources. While previous studies have mainly examined Internet use or healthy living behaviors separately, this study addresses both dimensions simultaneously, thus filling an important gap in the literature.

Keywords: Health behavior; Health literacy; Internet use; Pregnancy