Recruitment Outcomes
’ transformation, MSM, alter-egos
RECRUITMENT
The first recruitment outcome was whether egos recruited alters completing online enrollment by delivering HIV e-reports. Egos who successfully recruited alters were defined as ego-RA; otherwise they were defined as ego-NRA. For the first outcome, egos were the target population for analysis. The second recruitment outcome was alters’ transformation into alter-egos. Alters were considered to have transformed into offline ego recruiters for the subsequent recruitment wave (hereinafter “alter-egos”) when they had transformed from online to offline egos after they tested for HIV at Lingnan and received an HIV e-report. For the second outcome, alters were the target population for analysis. Alter-egos delivering HIV e-reports to their friends in the MSM community could expand recruitment in subsequent waves. From these data, we created 2 dichotomous dependent variables: (1) whether ego successfully recruited alters; and (2) whether alter transformed into alter-ego.Additionally, when e-report online delivery was identified as a significant influencing factor for recruitment, it was further applied as a dependent variable to explore its influencing factors.