Population Size Estimation of Men Who Have Sex With Men in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Google Trends Analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Population size estimation (PSE) for key populations is needed to inform HIV programming and policy.

Objective

This study aimed to examine the utility of applying a recently proposed method using Google Trend (GT) internet search data to generate PSE (Google Trends Population Size Estimate [GTPSE]) for men who have sex with men (MSM) in 54 countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

Methods

We examined GT relative search volumes (representing the relative internet search frequency of specific search terms) for "porn" and, as a comparator term, "gay porn" for the year 2020. We assumed "porn" represents "men" (denominator) while "gay porn" represents a subset of "MSM" (numerator) in each county, resulting in a proportional size estimate for MSM. We m

SUBMITTER: Malburg CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11737527 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature