Objective: To explore the associations between partner-seeking activities through internet and HIV/AIDS related risk behaviours among men who have sex with men (MSM).
Methods: Target sampling, anonymous questionnaires were adopted and analyzed with SPSS 11.0.
Results: Data from 45.6% of the 2178 valid questionnaires showed that most partner-seeking activities was through internet. 73.1% of them landed on gay website, in which 83.0% looked for sexual partners and 91.7% of them had intercourse with other men met through internet when compared with MSM who did not seek sex activities through internet. The internet group obviously had fewer numbers of partners (5.73 vs. 10.3), oral sex partners (5.13 vs. 8.71), passive anus sex partners (4.67 vs. 8.26) and active anus sex partners (3.51 vs. 6.06) in the past 6 months (P < 0.01 respectively) and obviously had fewer group sex (16.7% vs. 20.5%) activities in the past one year but had more activities on oral sex (94.7% vs. 89.6%), anus sex (95.1% vs. 86.5%), regular sexual partner (52.6% vs. 46.7%) in the past 6 months (83.4% vs. 75.5%) (P < 0.01 respectively) and more likely to have finger intercourse (52.2% vs. 38.5%), hemorrhage sexual intercourse (36.4% vs. 21.9%, OR = 2.04), non-local sexual intercourse (28.1% vs. 22.7%) (P < 0.01 respectively).
Conclusion: Seeking sexual partners through internet had positive and double effects on MSM's risk behaviours, suggesting that it is of urgent need to take the advance of internet and gay website to disseminate HIV/AIDS prevention message.