Recruitment, Participation, Randomization, and Completion
RECRUITMENT, RECRUITMENT
There were 686 responders to our Google Forms baseline questionnaire, of whom 643 (93.7%) participated in the study. The other 6.3% (43/686) of responders did not meet the inclusion criteria and were excluded from the study before they could continue to the next section of the questionnaire (the consent form). Of these 43 responders, 3 (7%) were excluded because they were male, 2 (5%) were aged <18 years, 14 (33%) did not have children aged ≤10 years, and 24 (56%) did not have a Facebook profile or did not want to enter a new Facebook group to participate in the study.Recruitment lasted for an intensive 10 days. Afterward, we closed the Google Forms questionnaire and randomized the 643 participants at once to the intervention or control group. A total of 50.1% (322/643) of the participants were in the intervention group, and 49.9% (321/643) were in the control group. Of the 322 participants in the intervention group, 300 (93.2%) entered the Facebook group, and of these 300 participants, 286 (95.3%) stayed in the group until the end of the study. We also added 16 mothers from personal acquaintance to the Facebook group (including the group administrator—the PhD student carrying out this study). They were not part of the study and did not fill out the study questionnaires. The importance of adding these participants was supported by the conclusions we drew from the pilot study, where most participants did not understand that they were encouraged to upload new posts themselves. In the RCT, we added these participants to the Facebook group to set an example for the other users, demonstrating that it was part of the group’s norm to participate and be active users.Of the 322 participants in the intervention group, 242 (75.2%) answered the second questionnaire, and of the 321 participants in the control group, 234 (72.9%) answered the second questionnaire. The others were lost to follow-up. The flowchart of recruitment, randomization, and completion of the study is presented in Flowchart of recruitment, randomization, and completion of the study.