Alcohol Use During Pregnancy: Impact on Child Development

The association between alcohol use during pregnancy and developmental delay in children.

Develop a question to guide your search

P: Pregnant women

I: Alcohol use

O: Cognitive delay/ developmental delay

How did you come up with your research problem?

This topic is close to my heart. I first became interested in this topic when I was one of the students selected out of my graduate class to participate in a research study on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The research was conducted with NIH and the District of Columbia Public School. The research looked at the prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome DC public schools. I learned a tremendous amount of information on alcohol use during pregnancy. I continue to have a passion to research this topic. Most recently I worked with the Baltimore City Department of Social Service to

I initially had some challenges finding articles using CINAHL however once I refined my search criteria by becoming more specific with my search such as using alcohol use AND pregnancy AND effects I was able to find more articles related to my topic.

Did you identify any primary sources of literature and if so, what is one example?

Yes, I found a primary source of literature. One example: Measures of maternal alcohol use as predictors of development in early childhood. This article discussed developmental delay exhibited by children at age 6 years of age in women that report drinking during their pregnancy and reported being heavy drinker prior to becoming pregnant.

What about secondary source-can you provide one example?

One example of a secondary source that I found is Fetal anomalies and long-term effects associated with substance abuse in pregnancy: a literature review. The secondary source is a review article that reviews the current literature on the effects of substance abuse on cognitive anomalies

How did you go about synthesizing the primary sources to develop your literature