Sample Selection And Rationale For Safe Sexual Practices

Sample Selection and Rationale:

The target population for this study are individuals who do not have HIV but have some risk, small or large, to acquire it. In this study the accessible population will be individuals who live the Washington DC metropolitan and have an interest in starting PrEP treatment. To acquire individuals from the accessible population, Primary Care Physicians (PCP) in the area will be notified about the study and be requested to inform any patients interested in starting PrEP. Local hospitals will also be contacted and informed to refer patients to the study as well HIV testing clinics. Workshops in local communities in the area about safe sexual practices will be held and attendees will be informed about the use of PrEP

Then individuals will be contacted to come into the research office to complete an initial survey to measure their sexual behavior. The survey will have semantic differential scale and each answer choice will be awarded a certain number of points. This reduces the number of questions have to answer. There will also be a comment space after each question if the participant wants to add any additional information about their answer choice; this is not required but is optional and will be stated on the survey. An example question on the survey would be, “How likely are you to maintain a monogamous sexual relationship with your partner?” The participant would have the answer choices of Never—1 point, Somewhat Unlikely—2 points, Neutral—3 points, Most likely—4 points, Always—5 points. Each question has a total of 5 attainable points and there will 10 questions, providing a total of 50 attainable points in the survey. Those who score 1-25 points will be considered high risk while those who score between 26-50 will be considered low risk individuals. After the participants are sorted into each comparison group, they will begin PrEP. They will also be given small calendar journals to keep track of their PrEP usage and to avoid missing any

They will receive another notification 3 business days before their appointment. When the participants come in for their first observation they will given the same survey in the initial screening with an additional question measuring their consistency in the use of PrEP. They will also be complete an interview with a researcher answering questions on how they feel about the programs; what they like, what they don’t like, what they would like to see be changes. They will also be asked about any major life events that could have an effect on their PrEP usage and sexual behavior. The participants will also receive a medical examination to observe adverse effects of PrEP. Once they complete the survey, interview and medical examination, the participants will be awarded a $75 gift card. They will also receive another journal to keep track of their PrEP usage till the next observation period. The data collected at the 90 day period will be analyzed and compared to the data collected at the initial observation before the PrEP treatment to see if there is a significant difference in the two data sets. Based on the significance, the null hypothesis at the 90 day period will either be rejected or failed to reject. At the 1 year and 2 year period the same methods will be implemented and the null hypothesis will be tested at each period and will be compared