Wong Jill, Foussat Agathe C, Ting Steven, Acerbi Enzo, van Elburg Ruurd M, Mei Chien Chua
Precision Nutrition D-lab, Danone Nutricia Research, Singapore, Singapore.
Cytel Singapore Private Limited, Singapore, Singapore.
JMIR Pediatr Parent. 2021 Oct 26;4(4):e30169. doi: 10.2196/30169.
Parents commonly experience anxiety, worry, and psychological distress in caring for newborn infants, particularly those born preterm. Web-based therapist services may offer greater accessibility and timely psychological support for parents but are nevertheless labor intensive due to their interactive nature. Chatbots that simulate humanlike conversations show promise for such interactive applications.
The aim of this study is to explore the usability and feasibility of chatbot technology for gathering real-life conversation data on stress, sleep, and infant feeding from parents with newborn infants and to investigate differences between the experiences of parents with preterm and term infants.
Parents aged ≥21 years with infants aged ≤6 months were enrolled from November 2018 to March 2019. Three chatbot scripts (stress, sleep, feeding) were developed to capture conversations with parents via their mobile devices. Parents completed a chatbot usability questionnaire upon study completion. Responses to closed-ended questions and manually coded open-ended responses were summarized descriptively. Open-ended responses were analyzed using the latent Dirichlet allocation method to uncover semantic topics.
Of 45 enrolled participants (20 preterm, 25 term), 26 completed the study. Parents rated the chatbot as "easy" to use (mean 4.08, SD 0.74; 1=very difficult, 5=very easy) and were "satisfied" (mean 3.81, SD 0.90; 1=very dissatisfied, 5 very satisfied). Of 45 enrolled parents, those with preterm infants reported emotional stress more frequently than did parents of term infants (33 vs 24 occasions). Parents generally reported satisfactory sleep quality. The preterm group reported feeding problems more frequently than did the term group (8 vs 2 occasions). In stress domain conversations, topics linked to "discomfort" and "tiredness" were more prevalent in preterm group conversations, whereas the topic of "positive feelings" occurred more frequently in the term group conversations. Interestingly, feeding-related topics dominated the content of sleep domain conversations, suggesting that frequent or irregular feeding may affect parents' ability to get adequate sleep or rest.
The chatbot was successfully used to collect real-time conversation data on stress, sleep, and infant feeding from a group of 45 parents. In their chatbot conversations, term group parents frequently expressed positive emotions, whereas preterm group parents frequently expressed physical discomfort and tiredness, as well as emotional stress. Overall, parents who completed the study gave positive feedback on their user experience with the chatbot as a tool to express their thoughts and concerns.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03630679; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03630679.
在照顾新生儿尤其是早产新生儿时，父母通常会经历焦虑、担忧和心理困扰。基于网络的治疗师服务可能为父母提供更大的可及性和及时的心理支持，但由于其互动性质，劳动强度较大。模拟类人对话的聊天机器人在这类互动应用中显示出前景。
本研究旨在探讨聊天机器人技术用于收集新生儿父母关于压力、睡眠和婴儿喂养的现实生活对话数据的可用性和可行性，并调查早产和足月产婴儿父母经历的差异。
2018年11月至2019年3月招募了年龄≥21岁且婴儿年龄≤6个月的父母。开发了三个聊天机器人脚本（压力、睡眠、喂养），以通过移动设备与父母进行对话。研究结束时，父母完成了一份聊天机器人可用性问卷。对封闭式问题的回答和手动编码的开放式回答进行了描述性总结。使用潜在狄利克雷分配方法对开放式回答进行分析，以揭示语义主题。
45名登记参与者（20名早产，25名足月产）中，26名完成了研究。父母将聊天机器人评为使用“容易”（平均4.08，标准差0.74；1=非常困难，5=非常容易）且“满意”（平均3.81，标准差0.90；1=非常不满意，5=非常满意）。在45名登记父母中，早产婴儿的父母比足月产婴儿的父母更频繁地报告情绪压力（33次对24次）。父母普遍报告睡眠质量令人满意。早产组比足月组更频繁地报告喂养问题（8次对2次）。在压力领域对话中，与“不适”和“疲劳”相关的主题在早产组对话中更普遍，而“积极情绪”主题在足月组对话中出现得更频繁。有趣的是，与喂养相关的主题主导了睡眠领域对话的内容，表明频繁或不规律的喂养可能会影响父母获得充足睡眠或休息的能力。
聊天机器人成功用于从45名父母群体中收集关于压力、睡眠和婴儿喂养的实时对话数据。在他们的聊天机器人对话中，足月组父母经常表达积极情绪，而早产组父母经常表达身体不适和疲劳以及情绪压力。总体而言，完成研究的父母对他们使用聊天机器人作为表达想法和担忧的工具的用户体验给予了积极反馈。
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03630679；https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0
