The Married Men Who Have Sex With Men Study (M2M Study), Recruitment Strategies Used To Understand Issues, Optimize Healthcare And Inform The Community

Introduction: The study of married men who have sex with men (MMSM) aims to understand the social, sexual and demographical aspects of MMSM, to guide a better understanding of this group, promote education initiatives, support and explore the risk environments to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections including HIV.

Methods: A descriptive method of publicly available data on the internet was used to formulate proxy markers to indicate where the populations of MMSM are located. Using the search engine of highly popular adult web sites with a personal ads section for men to contact each other, observations are based on profiles who choose to identify as gay, bisexual, bi-curious, curious, or open-minded but also married, attached or de-facto. Postcodes or suburbs were recorded to target specific areas in NSW for successful diverse sampling and enable appropriate recruitment.

Results: The proxy maker search resulted in 730 men who met the criteria with an age range from 18 – 77 years old and mean age being 38 years. The most frequent postcodes used were Sydney city (2000) then the Western suburbs of Sydney which tend to be more working class and family orientated suburbs with MMSM. A cross-tabulation of the 730 profiles showed 7.0% of men indicated their sexual ID as “gay” but 45.8 % chose to identify as “bi-curious” and 33.7 % identified as “bisexual”. Whereas 13.6% remain “straight” even though they were seeking men for sex. 40.1 % of men were married, 25.6 % attached and 19.7% in an open relationship.

Conclusions:The use of specific strategic recruitment methods targeting key groups and areas prove to yield a greater response rate for surveys. Proxy markers are a valuable recruitment tool and can also be used for concentrated HIV/STI prevention campaigns in the areas of greater risk