2.2.2. Stakeholder Interviews
We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with
national and regional level
stakeholders (professionals, service user organisation representatives,
policy makers) in the interviewees’ native language (English or Dutch).
We used an interview guide with a focus on personalisation and safety in
maternal and neonatal care during the pandemic (Supplementary File 2).
Thirty-nine national and regional maternity care stakeholders were
purposively selected and invited to ensure that there was representation
from all key maternity and service-user organisations involved in
national maternity and neonatal policy during the pandemic in the UK and
NL. Twenty-six participants from the UK and thirteen from the NL were
interviewed (Table 2). More stakeholders were interviewed in the UK than
in the NL, since the UK has more service-user organisations than the NL
and we wanted to make sure we had representation of all devolved nations
(Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland). The interviews were held from July
2020 to December 2020 and were video- or audio-recorded in Microsoft
Teams and transcribed using Sonix (Sonix Inc., San Francisco, CA) and
MaxQDA software (v18.2.5) and were subject to post-transcription manual
checks and editing. Interviews were undertaken by four researchers in
the UK and two researchers in NL. All interviewers were experienced
qualitative researchers and most of them had experience of undertaking
research in maternity and/or neonatal care.
Table 2 Interview participants