The reason for these contradictory findings may lie in the methodology used by the various authors who found that a lack of integration into the gay community or the dominant mainstream white community may lead to unsafe sex. For example, it is difficult to ascertain if the proxy variables that were used to measure assimilation and/or acculturation actually measure whether the participants were integrated into the gay community, mainstream society, or something else entirely. Seibt et al. (1995)