Sookja Kang, MSN, RN, a PhD student at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing and a 2025 Scholars Lab Fellow, recently presented her research at the Scholars Lab Fellows Research Showcase, hosted by UT Libraries. Meet the 2025 Scholars Lab Fellows.
Kang’s research explores the intersection of digital technology and maternal health, with a focus on enhancing health resource utilization and promotion for diverse childbearing populations. Her current project, titled "What to Expect (W2E): Understanding the Experiences of Plus-Size Pregnant Individuals through Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis of Online Health Discussions," investigates how digital health platforms can serve as valuable spaces for support and information-sharing.
Kang’s study aims to address the unique challenges faced by plus-size pregnant individuals. Her research analyzes online interactions within “What to Expect,” a widely used pregnancy forum, to better understand the stigma, gaps in care, and emotional experiences shared by this community.
Kang analyzed more than 25,000 online forum posts using two programming languages called R and Python. These languages are commonly used by researchers and data scientists to help computers sort through and make sense of large amounts of information. She used a tool called BERTopic to categorize topics. This tool helps group similar conversations together by recognizing patterns in language. To understand the mood or emotion behind each post—whether people were happy, upset or neutral—she used another tool designed to detect feelings in social media posts.
The findings revealed 54 distinct topics, categorized into four major themes, including:
- Common physical changes and challenges experienced during pregnancy;
- Complex physical and mental health experiences unique to plus-size pregnant individuals;
- General resources related to pregnancy, and
- Resources and recommendations for pregnancy-supportive clothing tailored specifically for plus-size individuals.
Kang said the results show that digital communities are vital for peer-driven insight and emotional support, especially for populations that often feel unseen in clinical settings. While NLP gives the power to explore these conversations at scale, expert interpretation remains essential for producing meaningful insights.
Her work contributes to the growing body of research using digital tools to amplify underrepresented voices in health care and promote health equity in maternal outcomes.