Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Since the mids, the rapidly increasing popularity of the Internet has contributed to a situation in which many men turn to Web sites to find sex partners with whom they can engage in risky behaviors.
Scholars only recently began to examine the role of the Internet in harm-seeking and help-seeking behaviors. They are just now beginning to study and understand how to apply public health promotion principles to people using the Internet. Due in part to the relative newness of the Internet on the public health landscape, scholars wishing to conduct research or to implement health promotion programs online should consider a variety of challenges to doing such workβchallenges that differ from those typically faced when undertaking similar work in other types of venues offline.
The purpose of this article is to address several of these research considerations. In particular, the present authors wish to provide researchers and health care specialists with key considerations when developing their own Internet-based research or health promotion programs.
We also wish to furbish readers with some experience-based suggestions about how to avoid the potential pitfalls of conducting Internet-based studies. Recommendations pertaining to the planning, recruitment, implementation, and evaluation stages of doing professional work online are provided. Keywords: research methods, hidden populations, hard-to-reach populations, Internet, online. Research methods courses and survey research methodology taught in college and graduate school often provide students with instruction regarding the proper ways to design and implement research studies of various types see, for example, Creswell, ; Patten, Typically, such courses include educational units that focus on options for developing a scientifically acceptable study design, selection and randomization of study participants, proper questionnaire construction, training interviewers, good interviewing techniques, strategies for building rapport with study participants, and so forth.
When such instruction is not provided, people tend to not have the knowledge and skills necessary to identify and work successfully with populations that are resistant to research endeavors, or to talk with members of these populations about topics that are very personal in nature. Many research methods and survey research methods courses also tend to omit instruction specific to the use of the Internet to conduct human-subjects research.
