For Your Own Good: Almost-Dr Offering Stuff to Pregnant Ladies

This in a Public Service Announcement. Yes, out of the kindness of my heart, I will from time to time be posting appeals to your heart, mind, and soul. Maybe your wallet. This time, it's all for the good of Pregnant Womankind.

The other day, I received a note from a very kind Ph.D. candidate seeking participants for her dissertation research. She's looking at how pregnant women evaluate magazines and magazine content specifically targeted at them. And she's waving [pheremone-packed] incentives to lure them to her online survey.

{Word to the wise: It pays to suck up to the Blog Writer. In this case, the mere utterance of "huge fan of your blog" was all it took...}

So I interviewed Megan Hopper (said "Huge Fan") to find out just what she had up her sleeve:

Me: You're doing a dissertation on pregnant women, who (we all know) are the world's biggest magazine readers.(I mean what else are ya gonna do when you're knocked up, especially when you're at the bitter end of the whole ordeal and need every possible tool in your kit to take your mind off the waiting and worrying, and it's not like you can just get drunk like you can when you're not pregnant...)

Anyway: What on earth made you want to survey these women? Don't you know how hormonally-loaded they can be?

Megan: I decided to focus on pregnant women for my dissertation research because I feel like they are a very undervalued segment in our society. Often I hear couples (and men in particular) saying "We're pregnant!" Well, no actually SHE is pregnant and is the one who is responsible for taking care of her body and the human life that is growing inside of her for nine whole months (give or take).

Also, I feel like pregnant women bear the brunt of many jokes in our society. Whether it be about how hormonally loaded they are, or how much weight they are gaining. The mass media in particular go after pregnant women and love to point out all of their flaws. We need less jokes and more recognition of the amazingly important role they are playing in our society.

Plus, I just had to get to know a population that is constantly having strangers touching their bellies a little bit better!

Me: Okay, Almost-Dr. Megan, you've done a bang-up job of kissing up to the Pregnant Women of the World -- how many of them do you hope will take your survey? On that note, how long will the survey take them? I mean, what if someone's taking your survey and their water breaks? Is it one of those hours-long questionnaire that they can save and come back to, or is it just a quick thing?

And hey -- you're not a medical doctor are you? Are these poor pregnant ladies going to be asked a bunch of questions about their fundus measurements and their glucose tolerance tests and things like that?

Megan: I hope to get 600 pregnant women to take the survey because I feel the more, the better to really make my results mean something. It will take about 35-45 minutes to take the survey. I know that seems like a long time but most of the survey asks for pregnant women to give their opinions about the magazine layouts they see, so most of it should be aesthetically pleasing. If their water breaks while taking the survey, I hope that they either praise the survey for making this happen or do not place any blame on the survey for making this happen!

No, I am not a medical doctor, so the pregnant ladies will not be asked any questions about measurements and blood levels. They will be asked to rate their confidence level in their current health care provider and in the place in which they plan to deliver the baby, but that is about it in relation to the medical field. I hope that the questions they are asked are fairly easy to answer and possibly even fun! I also hope that they realize through the process of taking the survey that their opinions and feedback matter and deserve to be heard.

Me: Well, I imagine if anyone would enjoy rambling on responding to questions about their personal opinions, it will be pregnant women. But I also happen to know that if any group of people is always chompin at the bit for a good deal on everything from diapers to deodorant, it's that group.

So let's cut to the chase here, Ms. Communications Doctoral Candidate From The World Renown Mizzou: Are you tossing any tasty tidbits into the pie for survey participants?

Megan: Yes, I certainly am! Each pregnant woman who participates by taking the online survey will be entered into a raffle to win one of three $50 gift certificates to Amazon.com. Also, any of the pregnant ladies who take the survey and reside near Columbia, St. Louis, or Kansas City, Missouri can contact me if they are interested in earning $20 to take part in a short focus group discussion.

Besides the obvious perks of possibly winning a gift certificate to Amazon.com, I hope that each participant will feel a sense of importance as well as a sense that they were able to let their voice be heard and recognized. I hope that their participation and the subsequent analysis of the findings will lead to a greater recognition of pregnant women and a better understanding of their unique standpoints while serving such an integral role in giving life.

All in all, I think this is a good deal, folks. Now, you won't find ME going and getting knocked up just to get my hands on a $50 Amazon gift certificate (though I have vague recollection of doing other, sort of related things for that chance before...) but if I was With Child, there's almost nothing I'd like more than kicking back with a glass of N/A vino, exactly-and-no-more-than three chocolate covered cherries, my son's bunny slippers and my Disney PJ's on, rapping on a keyboard about JUST what I think about magazines' messages to ME.

Thank you, Ms. Hugely Fanatic Almost-Dr. Megan Hopper from the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri for bringing the real voices of readers to the attention of publishers. Go get 'em, Grrls!

[For the record, The Editor disavows all involvement with this post.] (Probably because he's progesterone-deficient.)