ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses why and how the author ended up working at her particular field site and describes the demographic characteristics of the women. It describes her method and rationale behind choices in data collection methods. The author identified potential study participants with the assistance of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) fieldworkers with whom she was affiliated. She relied on NGO fieldworkers to identify pregnant women. The author approached a total of 156 women. Only one woman refused to participate, and another turned out not to be pregnant and so was dropped from the study. The author chose a biocultural approach for her study, because it provides a holistic means of addressing the effect of the interrelationship between sociocultural and biological factors on health and well-being. Qualitative data were assessed through a grounded theory approach, whereby the author examined the relationships between reproductive histories and food consumption behaviors for how women constructed their pregnancy experiences.
