Partner concordance on physical activity and relationship quality during the transition to parenthood (TTP): A longitudinal, observational study.
Student Initiated Study by: Sydneyjane Roberts, MA
The goal of this research was to understand how pregnant women and their partners affect each others' physical activity throughout pregnancy and birth of their first child. The primary aims were to assess 1) whether partners are concordant on changes in physical activity, 2) whether partners are concordant on measures of relationship quality, satisfaction, communication, investment, and support, 3) whether there are interaction effects between changes in physical activity and relationship indicators between partners, and 4) whether changes in physical activity and relationship indicators predict postpartum physical and mental health outcomes in both partners. In this longitunidal study, we followed our wonderful participants from their first trimester of pregnancy to 6 months postpartum, and completed data collection in April 2020. Sydneyjane Roberts' thesis (defended May 2020) utilized data from the first and second trimester timepoints of this study to examine the dyadic influences on daily physical activity during the early stages of the transition to parenthood. Sydneyjane further examined the data gathered in this study for her dissertation project. Her dissertation focused on a detailed analysis of 15 months of daily Fitbit activity data to gain a better understanding of how and why daily physical activity changes among pregnant couples throughout the TTP. She hopes the insights gleaned from this research will help to inform future couples-based intervention studies for new parents. Sydneyjane successfully defended her dissertation, and this project is in the manuscript preparation phase.
Presentations Related to this Project:
Roberts, S., Roberts, J.T., & Ranby, K.W. Fita-Parser: Open source analysis pipeline for easily aggregating Fitbit data gathered in large-scale longitudinal studies. Paper submitted to the annual convention of the Society for Behavioral Medicine virtual conference (2021).
Callan, S., Ulrich, G., Roberts, S., Ranby, K. (2020, February). Partner Investment in Physical Activity: Scale Development within Multiple Populations. Data Blitz presented at the health preconference of the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in New Orleans, LA.
