Health and Social Problems of Refugee Women and Their Children: A Qualitative Case Study.

Abstract

Objective: We intend to examine the health and social problems of refugee women and their children in this research.

Design: A qualitative case study.

Sample: We conducted this study between December 2022 and January 2023 with 19 refugee women aged 18-49 years.

Measurements: We used the snowball sampling method for data collection, and individual in-depth interviews were conducted. We completely transcribed the interviews and then main themes and sub-themes were created. To ensure reliability, two independent external coders were asked to code the themes and sub-themes, and Kappa analysis was performed according to the results. We found the Kappa analysis value as 0.87. After the analysis of the study data, we conducted the thematic content analysis on the Nvivo 10 software.

Results: We emerged the main themes following the qualitative data analysis were (1) experiences during migration, (2) communication while receiving health services, (3) childhood immunization status, (4) deciding to have a child, (5) deciding on the number of children, (6) use of family planning methods, and (7) the person with priority in the family.

Conclusion: This research indicated that childhood immunization in refugee children was inadequate, refugee women did not know about family planning methods, and even if they did, they did not use these methods because they wanted to have many children.