Analysis of the supportive care needs of the parents of preterm children in South Korea using big data text-mining: Topic modeling

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the supportive care needs of parents of preterm children in South Korea using text data from a portal site. METHODS: In total, 628 online newspaper articles and 1,966 social network service posts published between January 1 and December 31, 2019 were analyzed. The procedures in this study were conducted in the following order: keyword selection, data collection, morpheme analysis, keyword analysis, and topic modeling. RESULTS: The term “yirundung-yi”, which is a native Korean word referring to premature infants, was confirmed to be a useful term for parents. The following four topics were identified as the supportive care needs of parents of preterm children: 1) a vague fear of caring for a baby upon imminent neonatal intensive care unit discharge, 2) real-world difficulties encountered while caring for preterm children, 3) concerns about growth and development problems, and 4) anxiety about possible complications. CONCLUSION: Supportive care interventions for parents of preterm children should include general parenting methods for babies. A team composed of multidisciplinary experts must support the individual growth and development of preterm children and manage the complications of prematurity using highly accessible media.