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  • Letter to the Editor
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Author response

Journal of Perinatology volume 29, page 649 (2009)Cite this article

Pector's1 careful reading of our paper yields valuable insights into topics that were not explored during this study. Indeed, families with infants who had died were excluded from the study. These parents most certainly have experiences and beliefs that are worthy of consideration. Although transferability of the research was limited by the exclusion of these families, this criterion is so essential in and of itself that it warrants specific study.

As Pector notes, the beliefs of families making decisions prenatally about neonatal research differed in some respects from those families making decisions postnatally. Most participants believed that their decisions about neonatal research were correct, based on the health outcomes of their children. As these beliefs were all explored retrospective to the parents’ decisions, and many long-term outcomes of prematurity or prenatal diagnoses of birth defects were still unknown to the families, exploring the beliefs of families who had negative outcomes (for example, infant death) necessitates particular study.

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References

  1. Ward F R . Chaos, vulnerability and control: parental beliefs about neonatal clinical trials. J Perinatol 2008; 29: 156–162.

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  1. School of Nursing, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA

    F Ward

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Correspondence to F Ward.

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Ward, F. Author response. J Perinatol 29, 649 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2009.67

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