The first of the planned three reports of the European Internet Research on Men who have sex with men (EMIS) announced today at the Robert Koch Institute website.

As requested by the United Nations General Assembly, a brief summary of UNGASS indicators for MSM based on EMIS data is also available in English and Russian.

The EMIS questionnaire was available online between June 4 and August 31, 2010.

It was promoted online and offline through media for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM). Following the slogan "Be part of something huge!", more than 180,000 MSM living in Europe, and more than 160,000 MSM living in the 27 EU member states have completed the questionnaire.

EMIS is thus the largest international study ever conducted on homosexually active men. This strong response to a 20 minute survey demonstrates both a highly acceptable instrument and high community engagement. Neither would have been possible without the participation and support of local, national, and international LGBT organizations, as well as pan-European gay-organised social online-networks like GayRomeo, Manhunt, Qruiser, Qguys, or Gaydar.

According to the published results, Germany has the second largest population among the participating countries. In Slovenia (.si), the absolute number of respondents was just over 1000 but the relative response rate was similar to Germany. A comparison of response rate takes into account the countries’ population size.

On average, EMIS respondents were 30 years old. However, there is an obvious pattern by region: In Eastern and South‐Eastern European countries, participants were younger, while in Northern  and North‐Western European countries, respondents were older, many of them over 50. This may partly reflect different age distributions in the countries, but also different access and familiarity with the Internet, or different times spans since the emergence of visible gay communities.

About 35% of participants have taken an HIV test in the previous 12 months. Testing for HIV in the last year was most common in Spain (.es), Portugal (.pt), Belgium (.be), and France (.fr). HIV‐testing was least common in Lithuania (.lt), Finland (.fi), Slovenia, Croatia (.hr), and Turkey (.tr).

The average knowledge score regarding five statements on HIV and testing was 93%. Knowing that AIDS is caused by a virus called HIV, or that a medical test can show whether you have HIV or not, was almost universal (98%). 94% said you knew already that there is still no cure for HIV infection, and 92% knew that HIV infection can be controlled with medicines, reducing its impact on health. 90% knew that after becoming infected with HIV, it may take several weeks before it can be detected in a test. Regional differences were small, but indicated slightly greater knowledge gaps in Eastern and South‐Eastern European countries.

As for Serbia considers, EMIS's research responded to a total of 1155 men who have sex with other men, or 1.54% compared to the 10,000 inhabitants of the general population. The average age of participants was 28 years. In last 12 months 32.2% of MSM get HIV testing. As in many similar research that has been done in the past in Serbia, EMIS survey also showed that members of the MSM in Serbia have an extremely high level ofknowledge about HIV and AIDS - 93.1% (which are the average result of all investigations). Of the total number of participants in the survey, the proportion of MSM diagnosed with HIV was 2.8%. However, due to the fact that some do not know they are infected, as well as the different possible motivations of people living with HIV to participate in EMIS research in different countries, the authors of the study can not safely assume that the results on the prevalence reflect the actual proportion of gay MSM andother people living with HIV.

Only 17.3% of all respondents from Serbia said that "most people who know me and who are close to me know that I am gay". That's less than 1/4 of gay and bisex men who are "openly gay", which places us in the same group with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. On the other hand, the highest percentage of "being openly gay" (more than 2/3 of respondents) was found in the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands.

According to EMIS data, men in Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland and France reported the highest satisfaction with their sex lives. In contrast, less than half of respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Cyprus, Belarus,Ukraine, Estonia, Serbia, Russia and Hungary said they were satisfied with their sexlives.

Other results of this study can be found at by clicking here.

(Safe Pulse of Youth / EMIS)