A prospective longitudinal study of social, psychological and obstetric factors in pregnancy: response rates and demographic characteristics of the 8556 respondents

Abstract

Summary This paper introduces the Mater Misericordiae Mothers' Hospital‐University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy, a prospective study of 8556 pregnant women interviewed at their first clinic visit, and subsequently interviewed some days after the birth of the baby and again 6 months later. Additional data were derived from the medical record of the pregnancy and delivery. The study was designed to assess the impact of social, psychological and obstetric factors on pregnancy outcome. We present here details of the study design, sampling, response rates and demographic characteristics of the sample.

The developmental origin of adolescent alcohol use: Findings from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its outcomes

“…We found a weak but significant ssociation of maternal drinking before pregnancy, which may reflect residual confounding from other aternal or parental factors which we were not able to measure in this study (Merikangas et al, 1998b). We lso found associations of maternal drinking before and after pregnancy with child's greater consumption of lcohol in adolescence, a marker of environmental and/or modelling influences during child development, hich are known to contribute to later alcohol problems ([Lieb et al, 2002] and [Merikangas et al, 1998a]). ur main objective was to assess a potential association between maternal drinking in pregnancy and dolescent patterns of alcohol use.…”

“…This is a pre-birth prospective cohort study which examines the impact of social, psychological and obstetric factors on pregnancy outcomes. Further details on the study design, sampling, response rates and demographic characteristics of the overall sample are presented in greater detail elsewhere ( [Keeping et al, 1989] and [Najman et al, 2005]). In brief, 7223 consecutive women were interviewed in hospital at their antenatal visit (about 18 weeks into gestation).…”

“…Patterns of paternal alcohol use can reflect both genetic and environmental influences, therefore we cannot exclude the possibility that drinking by fathers, other family members and/or peer influences for which we did not have information, may have modified our findings. We used limited information co adolescence (Lieb et al, 2002). Future studies with better capacity to separate maternal in utero effects from environmental exposure during childhood and adolescence, including paternal drinking over time, drinking from other family members and the substance use patterns of peers are needed to confirm the robustness of our findings.…”

Family and early life factors associated with changes in overweight status between ages 5 and 14 years: findings from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its outcomes

“…Full details of the MUSP study are described elsewhere. 17 Mothers and children have been followed-up prospectively with maternal questionnaires being administered when they were at their first antenatal clinic visit, 3-5 days postdelivery, 6 months after birth, 5 and 14 y after birth. In addition, at ages 5 and 14 y, detailed physical, cognitive and developmental examinations of the children were undertaken, and at 14 y, the children completed health, welfare and lifestyle questionnaires.…”

“…A portable stadiometer was used to measure the height. Overweight or obesity was defined according to standard definitions derived from international surveys by Cole et al 18 Thus using the standard definition, in this study, a 5-y-old child was defined as overweight or obese if a child's BMI was greater than 17 18 Too few of the participants fell into the obese categories for meaningful analyses; therefore, we classified children as either overweight or obese (equal to or above the overweight threshold) or normal weight (below the overweight threshold).…”