Therefore, participants are potentially of a higher socioeconomic status than the general population. Members of the NCT are likely to have an interest in health, and may be more likely to actively seek health information than other pregnant women. Participants who were recruited via the online questionnaire are likely to have had an interest in the research. They also had to have Internet access to participate, which may mean they are not representative of the population. In future research, recruitment via the NHS would be preferable. Some participant characteristics differed from the wider pregnant population. In terms of age, participants were slightly older than the national average. In the present study, the average age was 32.7 years, whereas the average age of women giving birth in 2002 was 29.3 years (Office for National Statistics, 2002). The study population had fewer women in the overweight/obese BMI categories compared to the national average. In the study population, 25.4% were overweight and 6.8% were obese compared to an average of 50% of women of childbearing age overweight or obese with 18% obese at the start of pregnancy (The Information Centre, 2008). Most of the women in the study are primigravida, which is again different from the general maternity population. The results are still likely to apply to the general population because maternity care is similar for every woman and opinions are likely to be comparable. The methods of qualitative analysis are subjective, and therefore open to bias. Every effort was made to avoid bias. Software designed specifically for qualitative analysis was used and themes were checked by an additional person who was not involved in the study. Some issues were raised that were not directly relevant to this study, although these do warrant further research. These include the relationship between pregnant women and healthcare professionals, and how this affects the delivery and reception of information, as well as the effects of pregnancy on body image.