Effects of Internet popular opinion leaders (iPOL) among Internet-using men who have sex with men

The Internet has become a popular venue for facilitating sex networking for men who have sex with men (MSM). The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Internet popular opinion leaders (iPOL) in disseminating information about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), increasing the frequency of...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of medical Internet research 2013-02, Vol.15 (2), p.e40-e40
Hauptverfasser: Ko, Nai-Ying, Hsieh, Chao-Hsien, Wang, Ming-Chi, Lee, Chiang, Chen, Chun-Lin, Chung, An-Chun, Hsu, Su-Ting
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:The Internet has become a popular venue for facilitating sex networking for men who have sex with men (MSM). The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Internet popular opinion leaders (iPOL) in disseminating information about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), increasing the frequency of HIV testing, and reducing risky behaviors among MSM in Taiwan. A quasi-experimental study with a nonequivalent control website for comparison was used to estimate the effectiveness of iPOL. A community-level intervention, iPOL, was conducted at the Facebook social networking website and at top1069 as a control. The iPOLs actively disseminated HIV-related information via the platform of Internet opinion leaders and AIDS information center, and discussed and responded to questions or replied to Internet-using MSM. A total of 369 iPOLs posted 432 articles and 503 replies to others, influencing 959,088 persons on Facebook. A total of 1037 MSM, 552 (53.23%) from an intervention website and 485 (46.76%) from a control website, participated in the follow-up study survey (response rate 96%). At the 6-month follow-up after the intervention was conducted, MSM who visited the intervention website were more likely to receive HIV-related information (25.49% versus 10.47%, P
ISSN:1438-8871
1439-4456
1438-8871
DOI:10.2196/jmir.2264