Digital Aided Guide for Fathers-to-be

Based on Flash-technology, the digital aided guide can be accessed online from a dedicated project website; additionally this guide has been published on CD-ROM and is available free of charge at surgeries, health centres, etc. As regards content, it tries to convey that paternity leave is not only in Austria a topic that deserves to be supported and that, apart from financial aspects, the attitude of men plays an important role in this context. In this respect, the digital aided guide shall help fathers-to-be to overcome paternal reservations and to get prepared for their new role in a playful way. The acceptance of the application in general public is well documented in Austria by a user count of more than 150.000 people. Thematically structured chapters give insight to the basics of baby care, medical aspects as well as detecting the most important dangers. The internationalization of the project will support that a large number of citizens of the participating EU-member countries will soon be able to access this service. The Austrian research associate of the project, the Department for Information and Knowledge Engineering (ike) at the Danube University Krems, will primarily take on the coordination of the user-sided evaluation of the adapted digital aided guides. Thereby, the aim is to find out how the national versions will be accepted by users in the respective countries. Based on its research experiences, the Department for Information and Knowledge Engineering will develop a standardized evaluation design, which is supposed to be tested in all participating nations. Aim The aim of this project is the implementation of the “Digital Aided Guide for Fathers-to-be” in several participating partner countries. This guide has been well established in Austria since 2004 and has evolved from a project at the Danube University Krems (Austria). In order to achieve a successful market launch, the project’s partners from Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and the Netherlands will adopt the Austrian service according to their national cultural, social and legal circumstances.