Effect of 'Parentbot - a Digital Healthcare Assistant (PDA)' in Improving Parenting Outcomes During the Perinatal Period

The Parentbot - a Digital healthcare Assistant (PDA) is a mobile application-based psychosocial parenting intervention with integrated chatbot features, intended for couples to use during the perinatal period. It provides parents with multimedia educational materials (text files, audio files and videos), discussion forum, guided mindfulness-based meditation videos, guided reflection and gratitude journals and a chatbot to answer their queries related to perinatal care in real-time. This study aims to: 1. Develop a theory-based perinatal intervention with integrated chatbot features for both first-time and experienced parents 2. Examine the effectiveness of the PDA intervention in improving parenting self-efficacy (primary outcome), stress, depression, anxiety, social support, parent-child bonding and parenting satisfaction (secondary outcomes) among parents during the perinatal period 3. Examine the perceptions of parents from both the intervention and control group after the intervention 4. Collate suggestions for further improvement from the participants and members of the research team The hypotheses of this study are: The PDA intervention group will have significantly higher scores for parenting self-efficacy, social support, parent-child bonding and parenting satisfaction, as well as lower scores for stress, depression and anxiety compared to the control group receiving standard care after the intervention at one-month postpartum (post-test 1) and three-months postpartum (post-test 2).