Youth insights on menstrual health and hygiene in Burkina Faso; a comparison of written versus spoken qualitative text
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Proper menstrual health and hygiene remains a significant challenge for many schoolgirls in Burkina Faso. Understanding girls’ lived experiences with menstruation is essential, yet can be challenging given the taboo nature of the topic. While diaries have not previously been employed as a data collection method among girls in this setting, the use of diaries could generate unique insights due to their private, reflective, and participant-led nature. Our study aimed to explore the menstrual health and hygiene experiences of schoolgirls in Burkina Faso, comparing diaries and in-person interviews, and to capture girls’ thoughts on the process and value (or lack thereof) of diary writing. Methods This formative study involved 30 girls aged 12–19 years and began with an initial round of in-depth interviews to understand their experiences of menstruation. Participants were then invited to participate in a three-month diary exercise, followed by a second round of in-depth interviews focused on menstruation and the use of diaries. A systematic inductive and deductive approach was used for the analysis, supported by NVivo 12 pro. Results Common social meanings attached to menarche include “becoming a woman” and “staying away from boys”. Some girls said that they or their peers had to avoid cooking, attending festivals, and participating in religious prayers while menstruating. Teasing, stigma, and inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities were identified as major challenges in schools. For some, the diary provided a safe space to express their thoughts and share their stories about menstruation. However, challenges with diary writing included its additional workload, limitations linked to language proficiency and writing, and perceived repetitive questioning. Diaries and IDIs generated similar menstrual-related themes, indicating that they are equally effective in capturing experiences on this topic among this respondent group in this setting. Conclusions Our study reinforces the need to support schoolgirls in achieving menstrual health and wellbeing. Efforts should prioritize promoting education across communities to mitigate the impact of cultural and religious restrictions. In contexts where participants have limited writing and language proficiency, future studies may consider alternative methods that nevertheless facilitate privacy and are respondent-driven, such as audio diaries. Further research could benefit from adopting either method of data collection to fit the contextual needs of participants.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".