Sources, topics and acquisition routes and timing of health information acquired by women and their partners in the perinatal and postpartum periods: a scoping review protocol.

IntroductionDuring the perinatal and postpartum periods, appropriate health information is crucial for women and their partners. Although previous studies and reviews have identified various sources of health information, these studies have neither sufficiently clarified the relationships between the sources and topics of health information and the acquisition of health information nor included women's partners as participants. Thus, this scoping review protocol aims to map and synthesise evidence on the acquisition of health information by women and their partners during the perinatal and postpartum periods and clarify the relationships between the sources and topics of health information and the acquisition of health information. We aim to generate thorough knowledge of relationships and patterns from the answers to our research questions as follows: (1) What are the relationships between the sources and topics of health information that women and their partners acquire during the perinatal and postpartum periods? (2) What are the patterns of acquisition of health information by women and their partners? (3) What are the patterns of acquisition routes and timing of health information by women and their partners?

Methods and analysis: This scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute Manual for Evidence Synthesis for scoping reviews. We will search PubMed, CINAHL, Embase and Ichushi (Japanese electronic database) for relevant articles. The search in Google will be for grey literature. We will include sources of evidence that were investigated after 2020 and written in English and Japanese. Article screening will be conducted by two independent reviewers and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping review flow diagram. Results will be presented on tables and described narratively.

Ethics and dissemination: This scoping review covers only secondary data that are publicly available and therefore does not require ethical review approval. The results will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal and presented in a conference.

Trial registration number: UMIN000056170.