Jul 25, 2003  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is contributing $500,000 in grants to researchers who use the Internet to survey men who have sex with men about their sex habits, particularly when it comes to HIV/AIDS issues.

Grants range from $125,000 to $250,000 each, and are earmarked for approximately four research teams.

The application deadline for the grants was July 9 and awards could be distributed as early as Aug. 1.

The primary purpose of the project is to determine if Internet surveys are an adequate alternative to more traditional research methods like face-to-face or telephone interviews, according to CDC documents about the grants.

The project also considers whether the Internet is a viable way to reach men who do not frequent gay venues like clubs or community organizations.

“While several studies suggest that venue-based sampling is representative of most [men who have sex with men], an increasing proportion of [men who have sex with men] may be using the Internet to meet sex partners and may not be available for sampling through a more traditional, venue-based approach,” the grant application states.

Is Net the bathhouse of the 21st century?
Eric Rofes, an author and gay health activist, said the grants may signal a positive change for the CDC.

“Generally the CDC has not been on the cutting edge, and this may or may not be a move in that direction,” he said.

Rofes described the CDC’s efforts to target gay men online as “skittish, cautious and not particularly bold,” but he added that he is encouraged by this latest initiative.

Internet-based research is a growing field, and the early body of literature suggests sexual encounters made online are too often accompanied by risky sexual behavior.

“Similar to other high-risk venues of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., bathhouses and back rooms), the Internet may be a setting in which to meet new sex partners and potentially transmit HIV,” according to research released in February by the Medical & Health Research Association of New York City.

That study recruited nearly 3,000 men using advertising banners on a popular gay Web site and featured a 60-item questionnaire about sexual behavior as well as alcohol and drug use. More than a quarter of the sample said they had more than 100 sex partners, and 6 percent reported having more than 10 partners in the past month.

“Most men met sex partners online, and they were more likely to have unprotected anal sex than those who met partners in other ways,” the report said.

Internet-based sex research could provide important information, but the quality of results vary greatly and depend on the researcher’s experience, methodology and overall understanding of the gay Internet culture, according to Rofes.

“There are many, many different methodologies,” he said. “Everything from going into a chat room, to having a Web page to attract people to, to studying profiles and taking information from those.”

Profiling is particularly prone to inaccurate results, as Web users may list and seek fantasies online that do not match their actual behavior, Rofes said.

Bryce Eberhart, director of corporate communications for PlanetOut, which operates online meeting place Gay.com, agreed.

“I think one of the biggest mistakes researchers make is they try to draw conclusions about offline behavior based on online surveys,” Eberhart said.

Gay.com participates in several online research projects, and hosting such projects is part of the company’s duty to its constituents, he said.

“Online research is incredibly useful, and anything that can give health care professionals important data to fight HIV/AIDS, we support that,” Eberhart said. “I think for a lot of people it adds to their experience as being a part of the gay and lesbian online community.”

But the company has established limitations on the research it will host and an advisory board reviews proposals to ensure validity, ethics and respect for customer privacy, he said.

“The customer experience has to come first,” Eberhart said. “The point at which research proposals become annoying to our customer is the point at which we scale back.”