1. Introduction

Recently Korea has become a social issue due to low fertility and aging [1]. In particular, young people are often referred to as ‘Sampo generations’ have given up on love, marriage, and childbirth [2]. There were growing voices of concern about this situation in various points of view due to the problem of low fertility along with changes in population structure [3]. The causes of the low fertility rate were the rapid industrialization and the increase in the participation of women in economic activity due to the improvement of the education level of women [4]. In addition to the change in the perception of the child due to changes in the marital values and the change in the family type, the increase in the burden of child rearing was exemplified [5]. As part of the socio-environmental aspect of the low birth rate, the number of elementary schools will decrease [6], and a considerable number of uncompetitive universities will also be closed. In addition, national welfare policies can be difficult because of the rapid decrease in the workable population. As a result, the fertility rate of Korea has fallen sharply due to the avoidance of marriage by the youth generation and abandonment of childbirth [7], and various countermeasures were being implemented at the national level.

Many people are aware of the problems that can arise due to the low fertility rate. However, despite the recognition of these changes in the times, the solution to the low fertility is a very personal option and difficult to achieve by the government's policy and mandatory proposal. The reason for the young people to give up their life cycle was to give priority to the economic burden [5][7]. However, in the past, when economic conditions were far worse than now, the fertility rate was higher than in the past, Unmarried women might be pursued a man who can make self-realization through marriage rather than a celibacy, while at the same time looking for a ‘good man’ or ‘a man better than herself’[8]. Unmarried men are likewise more likely to postpone marriage and childbirth due to the difficulty of housing for marriage and the burden of family support, rather than being celibacy. In particular, pregnancy and childbirth were becoming more and more burdensome for women, and the traditional perception that birth, nurturing and domestic labor were part of women's responsibility has not changed. Because people are social animals, they interact and change according to social perceptions [9]. Changes in perception lead to changes in behavior. Which means people’s perceptions and behaviors has been changing not only by genetic factors but also by socio-environmental factors. Based on these arguments, it is necessary to focus on the change of individual behavior in order to solve the concern about the low birth rate in recent years.

As a research on human behavior decision, it is necessary to discuss Dorothy Jhonson’s theory of behavioral system of study which integrated existing behavioral science and biology [10]. She did not focus on human behavior as an internal organization of human beings, but rather on the behavior of individuals as a whole, focusing on what people were doing and what people meant. Which mean, the cause of the problem was focused on the individual rather than on what has happening. The human behavioral response in behavioral system theory, which was based on the definition of behavioral scientist and biologist, was explained as a result of organism structure and process of change of sensory stimuli. Which mean, human behavioral response was viewed as adaptation of sensory stimulation to social environment, and human behavior was influenced by other social circumstances. Behavioral system theory suggests that humans were also trying to maintain balance between parts through adaptation and coping with the forces applied to them. Accordingly, the behavior system of the human being leads to patterned, repetitive, and objective behaviors. In conclusion, this behavior system theory emphasized that behavior patterns determined the interactions between humans and the environment and form an organized and integrated functional unit.

Based on Dorothy Johnson's theory of behavior system, JA Kim et al., recently developed a pregnancy awareness improvement program to improve the awareness of pregnancy and applied it to young women [11].This program was composed of three sub-systems of Eliminative, Ingestive, Sexual, Affiliative, Achievement, Aggressive/Protective and Restorative. The characteristics of this program were divided into three areas: female reproductive education, friendship forming, and health check. Specific program contents are as follows; The female reproductive education consisted of learning the structure and function knowledge of the female reproductive system, communicating sexual assertion, and experiencing pregnant women, friendship area consisted of introduction of their family through their friendship among program participants, their location, oriental women's health activities, arts and pregnancy synergy activities, and maternal nutrition cooking activities, and the health check-up area consists of health promotion banks, BMI check, health biochemical analysis, and special lectures on pregnant women's welfare support system. Participants in the program had the opportunity to share their knowledge and their thoughts through regular meetings during the eight-month program period.

Realistic countermeasures for low fertility should be prioritized by the perception of women, who are the person directly involved to pregnancy and childbirth and to achieve the goal of improving pregnancy awareness, it is important to identify the thoughts and determinants of the women who may be pregnant and parturient of birth in the future. The purpose of this study was to analyze the pregnancy recognition improvement program participating experience phenomenon after applying to those who voluntarily agreed to research, The specific questions in this study was: What is your experiences with participating in the pregnancy recognition improvement program?

2. Research Method

2.1. Participants

This study was carried out to investigate the phenomenon of participatory experience among the participants who participated in the program developed by JA Kim et al., [11]. Interviews were conducted to 5 women, 20-year-olds who voluntarily agreed to participate in this study. The general characteristics of the participants were Table 1.

Table 1. General characteristics.

2.2. Composition of Pregnancy Recognition Improvement Program

The program was based on Dorothy E. Johnson's behavioral system theory to induce a change in cognition [10]. It was a program developed by 25 peer groups composed of women in the fertility period to apprehend the causes and alternatives for low birth rate and to verify the expert panel discussion. The contents of the program consisted of three areas; Part one for female reproductive education, Part two for friendship forming, and Part three for health check. The main components of change in recognition per area were composed of Aggressive/ Protective, Affiliative, Eliminative, Ingestive, Restorative, Achievement, and Sexual (Table 2).

Table 2. Composition of Pregnancy Recognition Improvement Program

2.2. Data Collection

In order to prepare and process the interviews, the researchers recruited participants who explained their intention to participate in the pregnancy awareness improvement program after explaining the purpose of the study. The Open in–depth interview questionnaires made from a study on the Recognition of Pregnancy [12- 16] used in the interview and interview was consisted of three consecutive structures: 'contents of program', 'feelings through participation in the program', and 'change of perception'. The final question for this study was 'What was your experience in participating in the program?' And 'What was your change through participating in the program?' Interviews were conducted three times per participant from December 1, 2018 to December 30, 2018, and took an average of more than 2 hours per session. All interviews were recorded under the consent of the participants. After completion of the interview, it was confirmed that there was no difference from the contents stated to the research participants. In addition, the characteristics of the study participants, the field notes that recorded the linguistic and nonverbal expressions and behaviors observed at the interview, the progress of the research, and the data that researchers should pay attention to in the analysis were written in the research diary.

2.2. Data Analysis

This study used Giorgi’s phenomenological analysis method which focuses on explaining the meaning of living experience based on the statement of the research participants through in-depth interviews of research participants. Giorgi's method of analysis consists of 'global recognition', 'semantic unit classification', 'transformation into semantic units into academic terms', and 'integration into structure'. This study was analyzed according to the context of Giorgi's phenomenological analysis method (Table 3). The specific analysis process was as follows. In order to get a feeling from the data, the participant’s statement was repeatedly read and pondered. Second, the ambiguous part of the statement asked the participant again to confirm the correct meaning. Third, the participants express their own experiences by expressing the participants' meanings in units of the same meaning (natural meaning unit). Fourth, the themes that could express the participants’ vivid experiences in the experiential statement unit of the participants were identified. Fifth, in order to specify the derived theme, the focus meaning that the participant’s experience means was described in the language of the researcher. Sixth, the central meaning was integrated and the situation structural description was made from the perspective of the participants. Finally, the contextual and structural description statements were integrated to create a general structural description of the meaning of all participants.

The analysis process was carried out at the same time as the data collection, and the area where the meaning of the data is revealed is underlined. Wherever there is a description of the meaning between the meanings, it is asked again, and meaning units are derived repeatedly until no more meaning appears. It was repeated again until the semantics no longer appearing, As a result, 289 semantic units were derived from 6 research participants. Among the derived semantic units, duplicate or out - of - structure units were excluded and used for analysis. The components were derived based on the derived meaning units, and the situation and structure were integrated by analyzing the correlation between the components. As a result, the structure of participants' experience of participating in the program was integrated into two categories (Change, Challenge) and 24 sub-component structures. In the process of analyzing the data, the researcher took the attitude of phenomenological reduction and went back to the raw data every time analyzing the posture of reduction, and repeated the process of verifying and supplementing the semantic unit derivation process. For this study, the researchers regularly attended workshops on qualitative research, cultivating their ability as phenomenological researchers and conducting ongoing phenomenological studies. In order to increase the validity of the data analysis on the statement contents, the research participants were asked again if necessary, and the relationship between the components was confirmed. In addition, two nursing professors conducting qualitative research were reanalyzed and tried to secure the validity of the analysis.

Table 3. Phenomenological Analysis according to Giorgi’s Method

3. Result

The result of Interviews on participation in the pregnancy recognition improvement program phenomenological analysis were divided into two categories, 'Change' and 'Challenge', which were derived through the Giorgi analysis process. Subcomponents of 'Change' were divided into 'The position of woman' and 'Discovery', and 'Challenge' was again divided into 'Opportunity' and 'Preparation' (Table 4). In other words, the participants thought deeply about the position of women through lectures and peer groups' interactions during the program, and found that the feeling of rejection of pregnancy was not only their own idea. It has been stated that marriage and pregnancy, which felt negatively in the career of women's social work, were recognized as a great and mysterious task for women. This recognition process was carried out with the opportunity of the pregnancy recognition improvement program, and as a woman, it was an opportunity to gain positive recognition as well as physical health through the promotion of health. Representative statements are as follows

Table 4. Experience Participating in the Pregnancy Recognition Improvement Program

3.1. Category A.

Change The subcomponent of Change, which was the category of experience of research participants, was ‘The position of a woman 'and Discovery’. While participating in the program, participants felt that they were burdened with their lives and roles as women, but they thought that being a parent was a human accomplishment and a great achievement. Representative statements are as follows.

3.2 Category B. Challenge

Among the participants' experiences, subcomponents of the Challenge category were ‘Opportunity’ and ‘Preparation’. Participants reported that they had the opportunity to practice their sexual assertion communication activities and to think deeply about healthy heterosexuals. And they expressed a positive attitude toward health promotion activities for healthy pregnancy.

4. Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to analyze the experience of participating in pregnancy recognition improvement program through phenomenological research. Through interviews, the experience of participation in the pregnancy improvement program was divided into two categories: Change and Challenge. The subcomponents were 'The position of a woman' and 'Discovery' and 'Opportunity' and ‘Preparation’.

As a result of the analysis, the participants considered the life and role of women as a burden. For example, recently the society has been rapidly changed in industrial structure in which women were ignored as incompetent unless they have a job equally man. Nevertheless, the society still needs the traditional consciousness that the women are dedicated to the family life and child care.

Participants thought that marriage and childbirth would be very burdensome because they could spend a lot of money on raising their children so that they did not have a job but they could also hand over poverty to their children. These negative thoughts are more convincing when they consider the life of their mother. These results are the same as study of [17-18]. So participants felt sad and pitiful when they thought of their mother. Nonetheless, participants had the idea that being a parent was a human maturity and a great achievement as a human. Through participation in the program, the participants thought deeply about their mothers and had the opportunity to look at another aspect of their mother. Participants therefore felt that if they were given an environment where their mother could feel a happy life, the negative thoughts of pregnancy and childbirth would diminish. On the other hand, the current measures for low fertility have been thought to be less practical for the women of childbearing age. These results are the same as study in [19-20]. The negative perceptions of pregnancy and childbirth were changed while activities of the program contents of sexual self-assertions practice with members, art activities and Healthy food making pregnant women, sharing their thoughts naturally. They realized that they were not only negative thoughts about their pregnancy. After knowing that the aging of pregnancy causes various genetic diseases including infertility, they also deeply thought about giving birth to a healthy child during childhood. In other words, it was clear that if they miss the fertility period, they would experience various difficulties, and consequently, it was concluded that the first thing for healthy heterosexuality and healthy birth was the health promotion activity.

Through the above results, the following conclusions were drawn. First, young women were delaying pregnancy and childbirth by the environment they were in. Second, if the advancement of young women into society was a reality, the social demands for them should be also changed. Third, the Pregnancy Recognition Improvement Program could provide realistic information on pregnancy and childbirth by providing the necessary information to the women of childbearing age.