The NIH-funded Get REAL project developed and evaluated an HIV prevention program for Black and White gay and bisexual young men ages 15 to 29. In order to evaluate the intervention, we collected longitudinal data from a sample of young men in Philadelphia, our intervention city, and Baltimore, our comparison city. We asked each participant for their street address. As an important part of our analysis, we need to compare the samples and control for any differences between the Philadelphia and Baltimore samples. Although we have not used GIS in the past, we would like to use census data and GIS analysis to characterize and compare the neighborhoods where our study participants live.
We have data from four annual interviews with our sample of 175 young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in Philadelphia and 100 YMSM in Baltimore, each with a residential address. We also have data from 250 Philadelphia YSMS who were interviewed once as a supplemental sample. Our analysis will also use data from the census and vital statistics for census tract indicators such as mean family income, % below the poverty line, racial distribution and health indicators.
The GIS analysis will result in maps of the residence locations of participants in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In addition, census tract measures of socio-economic status and health status will be exported to be used in STATA analysis of evaluation effectiveness. In other words, we will use the GIS analysis to compare neighborhood characteristics for our two samples of participants, and control for any differences using multivariate analysis.
The results of the analysis will be used in manuscripts describing the sample and outcomes of our evaluation project. In addition, this analysis will help us examine our recruitment strategies to see if we are reaching all the diverse neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
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