Are you connected?
Do you ever have chats amongst your friends about sex?
Who’s doing who, how many times, how many men, who’s on top and what is the ratio of indoor to outdoor locations? Perhaps you talk about how you negotiate an open versus closed relationship or what rules your relationship has when you have sex with other people. Do you tell each other when you have safe-sex slip-ups or when you notice a suspicious rash ‘down there’?
The Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales is interested in how same-sex-attracted men (SSAM) talk amongst their networks about sex and relationships.
The Kirby Institute would like to know how SSAM talk about these topics in their networks of peers or friends and how this informs their ideas and beliefs about sexual practices and sexual health. They are also investigating whether the sexual ‘norms’ created by these peer group conversations are different amongst peer groups in Sydney versus Melbourne versus Perth.
The study is called the Connect Study and it is the first of its kind in the HIV sector in Australia. The focus on groups and networks instead of individuals is breaking new ground on how we look at sexual health in the lives of SSAM.
The Connect Study has been running for more than a year with many men having participated. However, more participants are needed.
To be involved in the study, you need to be over 18 years of age, have had sex with another man in the last 12 months and live in, or frequently visit, the Melbourne metropolitan area.
Participation involves completing an online survey and then recruiting three of your peers or friends to also complete the survey. When you’ve completed the survey, the researcher will send you recruitment emails to pass on to your peers or friends.
All survey responses are confidential and the other men you may recruit into the survey do not have access to your responses.
Something that may help you recruit some friends to also complete a survey is the great incentive. Everyone in the longest ‘chains’ of participant referrals (i.e. a guy who’s referred a guy, who’s referred another guy, etc) will go into the draw for the chance to win $4000 worth of travel vouchers.
If you would like to be a participant in this important study and think you have up to three friends who might also like to participate, get in touch with the Melbourne data collection officer, David O’Keeffe.
Call David on 03 9867 6716 or email him at [email protected]
If you think you are connected, drop us a line.
By GRANT O’SULLIVAN
