Mixed Methods Studies on Breastfeeding: A Scoping Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Prenatal and postnatal health guidance, along with women’s individual experiences, greatly influences mothers’ breastfeeding decisions and duration. To understand this better, a methodology combining quantitative and qualitative data is essential. Objective: To map the scientific production on the promotion, protection, and support of breastfeeding developed from mixed methods research. Method: A scoping review that followed the JBI and PRISMA-ScR methodology. The search was carried out in the following databases: Medline/PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, BVS, CINAHL, Web of Science, and BDTD. The guiding question was: Which studies on the promotion, protection, and support of breastfeeding were developed using mixed methods? The research took place from December 2023 to June 2024. Results: Of the 3569 studies found, 36 studies using mixed methods were included, with a prevalence of explanatory sequential approaches. Breastfeeding rates in the selected studies remain lower than global recommendations. The barriers to breastfeeding reported by mothers include biological; emotional; cultural; unfavorable social and hospital environment; difficulties in clinical management; lack of support from family, friends, health professionals, and employers; and skepticism about the benefits of breastfeeding. On the other hand, the main facilitators of breastfeeding reported were education and counseling during prenatal, childbirth, and postpartum periods; women’s intention to breastfeed; support from family, employer, spouse, and health professionals. Conclusions: The studies highlighted various issues related to breastfeeding rates, barriers, and facilitators across different contexts and cultures worldwide. The findings demonstrate that employing mixed methods enables a comprehensive and nuanced assessment of breastfeeding practices and the evaluation of relevant interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".