4.2. Strengths and limitations of this study
To our knowledge, this is the first study that compares maternity care policy and its drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic between two different high-income countries. The multi-method approach that was used enabled us to identify similarities and differences in maternity care policy and their drivers within both the documentary analysis and interviews.
A limitation of this study is that we may have missed certain published policy documents over the period of our data collection. However, the in-depth interviews provided additional information that suggested this was unlikely. Having five interviewers may have led to variations in the kind of data collected, but the team approach meant that participants could be interviewed in their own language, and a detailed semi-structured guide was used to minimise any nuanced differences between interviewer style. Extensive discussion between the interviewers took place regularly, and a joint coding framework between the countries was established.