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New website: Gay men's sex survey

EMIS - European MSM internet survey on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour as to HIV and STIs

Duration: May 2009 - October 2011

Sigma Research is involved in a European Commission funded, 30 month project called EMIS. It is a pan-European MSM internet survey (EMIS) on knowledge, attitudes, needs and behaviour with regard to HIV and STI transmission. Researchers and scientists from 31 European countries will collaborate in EMIS to develop a common set of questions, 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 up to twenty-five European languages, and be widely promoted on MSM websites. The Europe-wide online 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 MSM who have many prevention needs poorly met (priority target groups).

The actual EMIS survey will run from mid-May to mid-August 2010. First results of the EMIS project can be expected by the end of 2010. The final report and other publications will be available here.

Sigma 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.

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. Partners marked with (#) are from countries within the European Union, but joined the EMIS project after submission of the proposal and are therefore also dependent on external funding.

Other national partners:
There will also be national health promotion partners in as many of the participating countries as possible - these partnerships will be agreed as the project plan unfolds.

International partners:

Advisory partners (part of the EMIS advisory board)

To find out more about EMIS go here.
This research is funded by the The European Commission.
Key Sigma Research contact: