| Summary: |
Fertility rates have become a matter of public health and economic development concern in many developed countries: As people continue to delay their decision of parenting, the number of couples seeking treatment for infertility has dramatically increased in recent years [C10]. An infertility diagnosis is attributed to a couple after 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse [ZHA09]. The decision to pursue fertility treatment has great expectations and uncertainty attached to it. There is solid evidence that facing infertility is one of the most defying psychologically distressing challenges across several countries and cultures [GS10].
Although progress on psychosocial adjustment and infertility has advanced significantly over the last decades, there is little investigation on (i) the combined influences of protective and risk medical, biological, and psychosocial factors within reproductive outcomes; and (ii) the cross-cultural validation of infertility psychosocial measures, and cross-cultural generalizability of the way infertility is experienced.
This project consists of two sub-projects. The first one aims to examine the impact of psychosocial determinants on reproductive success in couples. While the risk factors associated with infertility stress are well-known [VS07,DS10], we propose to explore if the risk posed by some of these factors might be mitigated by the presence of protective factors. Moreover, the link between these psychosocial factors and treatment success or failure is still unclear [NS08,MB10,BG11].
The second subproject focuses on cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceived infertility-related coping strategies and infertility stress. Culture can have a substantial influence on individuals and couples [SC10]. Although such studies are warranted [S09], there are no studies comparing infertility-specific measures between countries.
The purpose of this application is to secure funds to advance scientific knowledge in th  |
Summary
Fertility rates have become a matter of public health and economic development concern in many developed countries: As people continue to delay their decision of parenting, the number of couples seeking treatment for infertility has dramatically increased in recent years [C10]. An infertility diagnosis is attributed to a couple after 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse [ZHA09]. The decision to pursue fertility treatment has great expectations and uncertainty attached to it. There is solid evidence that facing infertility is one of the most defying psychologically distressing challenges across several countries and cultures [GS10].
Although progress on psychosocial adjustment and infertility has advanced significantly over the last decades, there is little investigation on (i) the combined influences of protective and risk medical, biological, and psychosocial factors within reproductive outcomes; and (ii) the cross-cultural validation of infertility psychosocial measures, and cross-cultural generalizability of the way infertility is experienced.
This project consists of two sub-projects. The first one aims to examine the impact of psychosocial determinants on reproductive success in couples. While the risk factors associated with infertility stress are well-known [VS07,DS10], we propose to explore if the risk posed by some of these factors might be mitigated by the presence of protective factors. Moreover, the link between these psychosocial factors and treatment success or failure is still unclear [NS08,MB10,BG11].
The second subproject focuses on cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceived infertility-related coping strategies and infertility stress. Culture can have a substantial influence on individuals and couples [SC10]. Although such studies are warranted [S09], there are no studies comparing infertility-specific measures between countries.
The purpose of this application is to secure funds to advance scientific knowledge in these problems. Our team has important contributions in the field of infertility psychology and counseling, both (i) acting independently and with other international collaborators, and (ii) as a cohesive team that works successfully in ongoing projects. Both are supported by our record of publications.
We intend to provide multi-disciplinary insight and solutions to well-identified research gaps and calls:
- use the couple as a unit of analysis [PP08];
- enlarge the scarce number of longitudinal designs and infertility databases [S10];
- validate of infertility-specific measures [S09];
- explore cultural specificities concerning the experience of infertility;
- better understand the male experience of infertility [GS10].
The team gathers recognized expertise in these particular topics.
Although this team's principal investigator (PI) is a young researcher, she observes high research potential, having recently published in a leading reproductive biology journal, won a research merit award from the Portuguese Society of Health Psychology, and has experience in supervising research projects. The PI is accompanied by senior researchers with successful funded projects in the past. Two of these team researchers are leading world key researchers in the area.
We propose to analyze both subprojects' objectives based on already existing information (see Task 1), recurring to longitudinal designs and multivariate models that are capable of prospectively testing our hypotheses while controlling for potential confounders.
The results derived from this project have the potential of facilitating |