No Place Like Home? Disentangling Preferences for HIV Testing Locations and Services Among Men Who Have Sex with Men in China

Abstract

In China, some health departments and gay community-based organizations have begun to offer home-based HIV testing kits in order to augment test uptake among men who have sex with men (MSM). However, HIV test preferences and motivations for home-testing among MSM in China are not well understood. The HIV testing preferences of 803 MSM throughout China were evaluated using single-item assessment and a discrete choice experiment (DCE). In both the single-item assessment and DCE, participants expressed strong preference for free and anonymous testing by health professionals. Both approaches also indicated that naïve testers most prefer home testing. However, among previous testers, the single-item assessment indicated that “home” was the most preferred testing location (vs. hospital or clinic), while the DCE indicated that “home” was the least preferred testing location after controlling for anonymity. HIV home-testing may have limited appeal to previously tested Chinese MSM if anonymity is not maintained. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10461-018-2366-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Prepared for PrEP: preferences for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis among Chinese men who have sex with men in an online national survey

“…This is a secondary analysis of data collected from a cross-sectional online national study on HIV testing preferences among Chinese MSM [21]. Participants were recruited from January 8 to January 312,017 through banner advertisements on web- and mobile app-based platforms on Blued, a large gay Chinese social media platform.…”

Prepared for PrEP: Preferences for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis among Chinese men who have sex with men from an online national survey

“…This is a secondary analysis of data collected from an online national study on HIV testing among Chinese MSM [18]. Participants were recruited from January 8 to 31, 2017 from web-and mobile appbased platforms widely accessed by gay men community in China.…”

“…Detailed recruitment and sampling strategies can be found in another paper [18]. Participants received $7.50 USD mobile data credits as the compensation for their time.…”

Prepared for PrEP: Preferences for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis among Chinese men who have sex with men in an online national survey

“…This is a secondary analysis of data collected from a cross-sectional online national study on HIV testing preferences among Chinese MSM [21]. Participants were recruited from January 8 to January 312017 through banner advertisements on web-and mobile app-based platforms on Blued, a large gay Chinese social media platform.…”

“…In order to address some of the shortcomings of online sampling, we assigned sample quotas for each of the following subgroups: annual income level above and below 5500 USD, educational level above and below high school, and have and have not disclosed MSM behaviors to a medical provider. Detailed recruitment and sampling strategies can be found in a previous paper [21]. Participants received $7.50 USD mobile data credits as compensation for their time to complete the 400-item survey, which took approximately 30 minutes to finish.…”