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Formative Internet-Based Research to Improve Health and Reduce HIV Transmission among HIV-Positive Persons (the Internet Study).

(Note: This study is now closed.)

The Internet Study is a two-year formative research study to inform the future development of an Internet-based sexual risk reduction intervention for persons recently diagnosed with HIV infection (in the past year). Specifically, we propose to conduct qualitative telephone interviews with HIV-positive men and women to identify:

1. Critical social, mental, emotional, informational, and medical needs following their diagnosis that can be addressed in an online format and within which sexual risk reduction messages can be integrated;
2. Personal and technological barriers to seeking and successfully accessing HIV/AIDS-related information on the web; and
3. Features that attract participants to access and return to websites.

In this study, participants will be recruited from offline (e.g., local HIV clinics, AIDS service organizations) and online (e.g., HIV-oriented websites) venues to participate in one-on-one telephone interviews. Both online and offline recruitment venues will be used to ensure that participants represent regional, race/ethnicity, and Internet usage diversity. Adult (18+ years) HIV-positive heterosexually-identified men and women, homosexually-identified men, and male-to-female transgender individuals diagnosed within the last 12 months (prior to enrollment) will be interviewed.

The outcomes for this study will include a list of topics (e.g., social, mental, emotional, information, medical) relevant to the needs of recently diagnosed HIV-positive individuals and a list of facilitators and barriers that these individuals face when accessing HIV-related information on the web. This study will allow us to collect a rich data set that will ultimately guide the development of a comprehensive Internet-based HIV risk reduction prevention and health promotion resource for HIV-positive persons in future research.