Evaluating the comparative effectiveness of different demand side interventions to increase maternal health service utilization and practice of birth spacing in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo: an innovative, mixed methods approach.

The innovative mixed methods design allows quantitative data to inform the relationships and phenomena to be explored in qualitative collection. In turn, qualitative findings will be triangulated with quantitative findings. Inspired by the principles of grounded theory, qualitative analysis will begin while data collection is ongoing. This "conversation" between quantitative and qualitative data will result in a more holistic, context-specific exploration and understanding of research topics, including the mechanisms through which the interventions are or are not effective. In addition, engagement of female community health workers as core members of the research team roots research methods in the realities of the community and provides teams with key informants who are simultaneously implicated in the health system, community and target population.