Web based research in sexual medicine: a position statement of the European Society for Sexual Medicine

Abstract

Background: Although the use of the Web has brought major advances in every step of the research process, this also comes with several methodological challenges.

Aim: The article presents the European Society for Sexual Medicine's position statements on key methodological concerns relative to Web-based research in sexual medicine.

Methods: The authors conducted a systematic scoping review of articles using Web-based research methods in sexual medicine. For the creation of the statements, the authors processed the data from the methodology of the studies and formulated the final statements reaching 100% agreement in the group.

Outcomes: European Society for Sexual Medicine statements were provided on the following domains: definition of the population of interest, selection of the population of interest, data collection quality, response rate, self-reported questionnaire, consent, and legal obligations.

Results: Researchers should justify the relevance of the Internet population to the population of interest; should clearly describe how they identified study participants; should select and employ specific measures to avoid hoax; should explicitly describe the process of calculation of response and completion rates as well as the relative implications; should validate traditional sexual health questionnaires for online and, if possible, multilingual use; should not ignore consent in Web-based research; and need to be knowledgeable of the technical measures and legal obligations to protect anonymity.

Implications: Researchers are advised to include trained computer scientists in their group, have a good understanding of their legal obligations as to collecting, storing and disseminating personal data, and design their studies by taking into account the challenges of Web-based research.

Strengths and limitations: The heterogeneity of the included studies and methodological low quality of most of them was a limitation, which also shows the importance of this study and the need for guidelines regarding Web-based research.

Conclusion: Large uncontrolled samples could be a threat to the quality of the studies and increase bias if researchers are not mindful of the methodological challenges they would need to account for.

Keywords: research; sexual medicine; statements; surveys; web.