ABSTRACT
In 1948 Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues published a volume, expansively titled Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. The overarching universality ofthe title belied the narrow range of men whose accounts formed the basis of the volume and occasioned some comment at the time. Similarly, the title of this book owes more to its fortunate congruence with the project's title than to any claim to be a universally valid, exactly definitive, account of sex, gay men and HIV. Nevertheless, since 1987, 1083 men have taken part in this study, entitled Socio-sexual Investigation of Gay Men and AIDS (hereafter SIGMA). All have been interviewed at least once, some up to four times, making a total of 2520 interviews, taking approximately 5500 hours. This makes Project SIGMA one of the largest and most detailed studies of male homosexual behaviour ever undertaken.
