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New website: Gay men's sex survey

EMIS - European MSM internet sex survey

Duration: May 2009 - October 2011

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EMIS - the European MSM Internet Sex survey - incorporates the UKs Gay Men's Sex Survey also known as Vital Statistics. The EMIS survey was available from 4th June to 31st August 2010, in 25 languages. 184,470 gay men and bisexual men took part, making it the largest survey of this population ever undertaken anywhere in the world. Researchers and gay and HIV organisations from 33 European countries are now working together to clean and code the data prior to preparing a range of reports. First results can be expected by the end of 2010. The final report and other publications will be available here.

Sigma Research is one of six Associated partners in the European Commission funded, 30 month project. It is a pan-European survey on knowledge, attitudes, needs and behaviour with regard to HIV and STI transmission. Researchers and gay and HIV organisations from 33 European countries have collaborated to develop a common questionnaire, and to conduct a simultaneous multilingual internet survey promoted on popular MSM websites all over Europe, and jointly analyse and interpret the survey results.

The overall aim of the collaboration is to improve behavioural surveillance and prevention work among MSM in the participating European countries. To achieve this, EMIS will generate comparable data about HIV and STI behaviour, HIV and STI prevention needs, gay community characteristics, and other sexual health-related issues among MSM in Europe by means of a common internet survey. The survey will run simultaneously in twenty-five European languages,and be widely promoted on MSM websites and by leading charitable organisations in 33 countries. The survey is intended to inform the planning of prevention interventions for MSM by identifying prevention needs unmet across diverse groups of MSM (priority aims), and identifying subgroups of men who have many prevention needs poorly met (priority target groups).

Sigma Research is one of six Associated Partners who are official contractors with the European Commission. These six partners all co-fund the project and share responsibility for producing, analysing, and disseminating scientific results. They all provide researchers who work at least part-time just on EMIS. In the UK, EMIS is part-funded by Terrence Higgins Trust on behalf of CHAPS. CHAPS is a national HIV prevention programme funded by the English Department of Health.

Main (Associated) partners:

Collaborating partners:
Collaborating Partners are usually national academic partners who support the project and help to implement EMIS in their respective country. They will receive a national dataset at the end of the project. Partners marked with (~) are from countries outside the European Union and are therefore dependent on external funding.

Other national partners:
There will also be national health promotion partners in as many of the participating countries as possible.

International partners:

Advisory partners (part of the EMIS advisory board)

To find out more about EMIS go www.emis-project.eu.
This research is funded by the The European Commission.
Key contact at Sigma Research:

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