Love, romance and frisky business are topics du jour this time of year. But for the Sexual Health Research Working Group in Indiana University 's School of Health , Physical Education and Recreation in Bloomington , sex – or sexual health – is a year-round rumination.

Researchers involved in SHRWG (pronounced shrug) pursue projects ranging from theoretical and conceptual approaches ,to sexual health research, to genital health and international sexual health. The communities involved in the research are diverse, including young breast cancer survivors, men looking for sex with men in public places, and ethnic minorities in the United States who are HIV-positive and have mental health needs.

Community involvement in SHRWG research is a priority for Michael Reece, SHRWG's director and a professor in the IUB Department of Applied Health Science, and Debby Herbenick, SHRWG's associate director. Reece became a convert to the importance of community participation in research during his postdoctorate work with the W.K. Kellogg Community Health Scholars Program at Johns Hopkins University .

Community-based research requires researchers to get to know the people and culture of the community they study. Community members give input into every aspect of the research project and are particularly involved in the process of making the research findings digestible to the community under study. This kind of approach isn't new to public health research, but it's a fairly new approach to sex research.

“Rather than spend a lot of time and energy trying to change sexual behaviors that we really don't understand, our team tries to understand how the social and cultural fabric of a community, or a particular relationship, influences those behaviors,” says Herbenick.

With condom research, for example, SHRWG researchers do not begin from the standpoint of disease, examining just the consequences of not using a condom. According to Reece, they pay special attention to the situational and relational factors that influence decisions to use or not use a condom. Why, for example, would someone not wear a condom with a particular partner at a particular time? Reece and Herbenick believe it is critical to pay attention to the details.  “We don't go into our research only looking for the negatives,” Herbenick says.

This more neutral approach, combined with issues of trust and confidentiality, can make communicating SHRWG research findings even more challenging in a field where working with the popular media is already complicated by political and cultural perceptions of sex. Moreso than many fields, coverage of sex research elicits debate, Reece says. Jennifer Bass, communication director for IU's The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, agrees. Reporters often seek “both sides” of an issue in their reporting, but when it comes to reports about sex research, the opposing view often comes from a social perspective, not science, Bass says.

This media tendency prompted Reece to decline an interview request to discuss his research about male cruising. Instead, Reece chose to make community members and others who may benefit from the findings aware of his work through presentations and a journal publication.

Despite the challenges, though, working with the mass media to communicate sex research can be useful and important. SHRWG's research findings involving sex education in Indiana schools, for example, have been discussed at a state public health conference, an IU media seminar for education reporters, and a widely covered press conference in Indianapolis.

IU's School of Journalism and the Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender and Reproduction have received a sizable grant from the Ford Foundation to examine the difficulties in accurately translating sex research into news. The Kinsey Institute will conduct media training at a national conference for sex researchers in the fall and the School of Journalism has begun offering classes specifically dealing with sex research.

To learn more about SHRWG, visit http://www.indiana.edu/~shrwg/ . To learn more about the Kinsey Institute and School of Journalism 's collaborative project, visit http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/services/KIJ/index.html .