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No Gay Men’s Sex Survey (GMSS) in 2009
For the first time since 1996 the Gay Men’s Sex Survey (GMSS) will not be happening in 2009. Instead we will be spending this year catching up with the 2007 and 2008 data outputs, running seminars and other dissemination activity, asking our collaborators what they want from the survey in the future, and piloting some new recruitment methods. We will also be expanding this website with more briefing sheets and other outputs.
There are two main reasons for not undertaking GMSS in 2009.
Following the production of the local area data reports for GMSS 2007, we discovered that a significant number of fake cases had been entered into the survey online. This required substantial investigation, the development of procedures to increase data validity and the total regeneration of all written reports. This extra work significantly impacted on our annual cycle of outputs: it has pushed back the production of the final report for the 2007 survey and delayed the preparation of the 2008 data reports and the final report. At present we hope to release the final report for 2007 in late June, alongside the 2008 data reports. The 2008 main report will follow in September 2009.
Also, while the Department of Health has re-commissioned the CHAPS programme from the Terrence Higgins Trust for a three years (April 2009 - March 2012), the research and development programme has been commissioned for a one year period only. The R&D contract for CHAPS is expected to be re-tendered in the next few months. We feel it would be rash for us to collect further data, without any guarantee that we will have resources to analyse it and write the outputs.
We intend to engage in press work in late June to let gay and bisexual men know that the survey will be taking a break this year and thank them for their input over the past 13 years. GMSS has been a success due to the thousands of men who take part every year and the hundreds of collaborating agencies that support it.
If you have any queries or concerns please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
