Psychological Factors Affecting Sex Workers

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Conclusion
References

Abstract

This study will determine psychological factors contributing to commercial sex work among teenage girls in New York City. The study will evaluate the strength of the relationship between psychological factors contributing to participating in commercial sex work. The participants, or relatively respondents, will be the retail sex workers. They had been initiated in the activity at an early age and had an experience with the kind of this work in New York City. Purposive and snowballing sampling techniques will be sought to identify the respondents who will lead the study to other respondents. A diverse social demographic characteristic will be desired, for example, age, level of education, family type, and history of sexual abuse among the girls. Semi-structured questionnaire and in-depth interview guide will be used. Qualitative data analysis will also be operated using thematic statistical analysis.

The study seeks to identify psychological factors associated with commercial sex work. The study will also find gaps in the governmental control measures or policies responsible for practicing commercial sex work. Therefore, the study results will be used to create awareness among the public on the psychological factors contributing to commercial sex work. Furthermore, it will help the government formulate regulating policies for teenage girls participating in commercial sex work in the city. In addition to identifying the gaps that should be mended to stop the retail sex business.

Keywords. commercial sex work, retail sex worker, teenage, teenager, psychological, dependence, behavioral, social psychology, general strain theory, correlation

Introduction

Commercial sex work is an income-generating activity that involves selling one’s body in exchange for money and other goods such as food, shelter, or on a regular or vocational basis. This activity requires male, female, and transgender adults. Commercial sex work may be formal or informal. In other words, it may be legalized or illegalized based on the country’s constitutional decision. However, New City has not legalized commercial sex work. This activity (MarÃa del Carmen & del Mar Molero-Jurado, 2018) takes place where there is a quick exchange of goods and services and short-term economic needs. However, legalized commercial sex work has organized settings such as brothels, massage parlors, and even nightclubs where they carry out their sex bus business.

Commercial sex work and other transactional relationships are currently standard in society today. The practice has produced over $100billion in revenue per year from commercial sex activities. Prostitution, or rather commercial sex work, has been the oldest profession in the world that meets the natural urges of humans in return for money. Over 40 to 42 million prostitutes globally, primarily aged 13-25, 80% females. Commercial sex work is determined by the differences in culture and values in society. However, prostitution is continually debated worldwide based on social and moral levels. It is believed that immoral and challenges that come from the families are a result of frustrations from parents and even low living standards or high cost of living; thus, young teenagers are forced to get involved in sexual activities to earn a living (Haider et al. 2020) This has been currently evidenced to be encroaching even the older jobless women.

Teenage or child prostitution is a term for children working as prostitutes. It has been estimated that about 1 million teenagers engage in prostitution in the United States being initiated into commercial sex work at an early age of 12 to 14 years. The introduction of girls into commercial sex for girls work is less than 17 years in the United States, while the average entry for boys into commercial sex work is between 11 and 13. In the Philippines (Shareck et al., 2021), UNICEF estimated 60,000 child prostitutes, and over 200 brothels in the Angeles City offer children sex.

The prostitution trade in America has attracted $14biliion in revenue annually, marking over 1 million prostitutes. Today, prostitution has become ramping in New York City, with many brothels sprouting every city corner. Registered hotels are flooded at night by ladies. Commercial sex in New York City is categorized into four forms. Institutional, commercial sex work, which is practiced in registered hotels and motels, freelance prostitution, which is traded by individuals who once dabbled in prostitution into the sex trade, cooperate commercial sex work, which is prostitution found in work organization driven by a quest to find employment and promotion.

Lastly, international commercial sex work involves cross-border prostitution and human trafficking (Gematti et al., 2019). A research team from the World health organization currently carried out the research by interviewing a sample of ten commercial sex workers from one of the streets of New York City, where they managed to collect data by interviewing them and then analyzing the data. The results obtained depicted that most commercial sex workers are pushed to do so due to social-economic factors, causing a lot of psychological touchers.

Sex work in New York City is a heterogeneous group in that females make up a majority of the commercial sex workers population, estimated to be 85- 90% (DuBois et al., 2018). Commercial sex work in New York City has a tremendous psychological connection that is unknown. It is believed that psychological factors such as delinquency, abuse and neglect, dysfunctional home, rebellious tendency, and truancy are major contributing factors to commercial sex work.

Socio-psychological and behavioral theories will guide this study to understand the psychological factors related to participation in commercial sex work. These theories are interested in people’s thoughts. (Benoit et al. 2018). The actual presence of the other influences feelings and behaviors. Socio-psychological theories argue that commercial sex work combines social and archeological factors with prostitution. This is attributed to predisposing parental promiscuity, child abuse, traumatic events of life, and parental neglect.

On the other hand, are attractive elements such as beliefs in making easy money out of prostitution. Finally, precepting factors such as poverty, unemployment, and environmental influences push people into prostitution. The general strain theory will explain the act of commercial sex work. It was developed by Emile Draheim and later by Robert K. Meeting and Ronald Agnew, who argued that; the societal provision of cultural goals determines deviance; therefore, prostitution is the reaction to the societal roadblock in achieving the socially accepted goals (DuBois et al., 2018). According to Haider et al., people engage in prostitution because they experience strain and stressors. General strain theory concedes that social forces influence or push an individual to deviant behavior. It is argued that difficulty in the social structures relies on the general strain theory (2020). Picos et al. argue that social relationship leads to deviance. However, it is different from social learning theory (2018). He argues that when an individual is not treated as they should in society which prevents them from achieving their desired goals, they are likely to resort to delinquency.

In addition, Agnew stated that a relationship that presents another individual with toxic or harmful stimuli results in these individuals resorting to negligence. For example, anger and related emotions that result from negative relationships may pressure adolescents into deviance. This theory argues that the effective negative relationship may create pressure for corrective action as adolescents use illegitimate channels to achieve their goals, for example, resorting to drugs and even commercial sex work. In addition, strain and stress may lead to delinquency. This is because societal expectations and standards on individuals are set too high. The individuals may fail to attain this success. Therefore, it drives them to deviant behaviors to achieve the desired goals, for example, deciding to engage in commercial sex work.

On the other hand, the behavioral theory will be used to determine the influence of individuals and groups on a person leading them to participate in prostitution. At the same time, Behavioral theory is a psychological theory known as behavioral psychology and a theory of learning. This theory postulates that all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment in a process called conditioning. Concerning commercial sex work, it is the response to environmental stimuli. In his concept of operant conditioning, this theory will help the study explain how individuals participate in a more rewarding behavior, such as commercial sex work. This concept will present the rewards associated with commercial sex work in that individuals sell their bodies in exchange for materials gains such as money, goods, and services. On the other hand, behavioral theory explains how teenage girls learn this act from the senior prostitutes who influence their behavior. As a result, they tend to join the same class to enjoy the rewards associated with commercial sex work.

In line with this study, researchers have hypothesized that psychological factors contribute to commercial sex work. However, this hypothesis has not been tested. Many gaps still exist in the literature regarding the relationship between psychological factors and prostitution.

Correlation has been established, and the characters and strength of these correlations are still known. Therefore, studies are needed to determine the gaps in policy measures on commercial sex work. In addition, a study I needed to determine the effects of engaging in commercial sex work. Therefore, the proposed research will predict that commercial sex work is attributed to social and psychological factors. Similarly, it will indicate that there will be reduced numbers of prostitute populations as long as the study is undertaken (Roan, 2019). However, the proper research is non-experimental and correlated as it will explore the relationship between psychological factors and prostitution.

Methods

Participants

A purposeful snowball sampling method will be used to find the responses. One respondent will be identified whole will, in turn, lead the study to other respondents. The respondents will be picked only for the study (Gematti et al., 2019). All the respondents will be aged 10-19 Who reside in New York City. We’re initiated into commercial sex work or work as a prostitute in the streets of Washington, Fifth avenue, Pack avenue, and Manhattan. The goal will be to find only female respondents with an experience in the business and who also has as diver social demographical characteristic as possible.

Measure

Demographical questionnaire. The social demographic questionnaire will consist of age, sex, race, level of education, marital status, family type, socio-economic status, history of sexual abuse, and history of alcohol and drug abuse among teenage girls.

In-depth interview guide. The in-depth interview guide will ask questions about their understanding of commercial sex work and what were the reasons behind prostitution. Questions will be asked about the individuals responsible for intimating young girls into commercial sex work. Questions will be directed to perpetrators such as child sex traffickers, recruitment agencies, and older women involved in the recruitment and pumping of girls (Martson et al., 2019). Questions will also be directed to vendors such as pornographers, pimps, brothel personnel, massage parlors, exclusive private villas and hotels, motels, sex tour operators, and hotel owners. In addition, the in-depth interview will be used to guide questions on parents, guardians, and relatives of the participants, hotel workers.

Focus group discussion. Focus group discussion will ask questions about the senior members or girls who have practiced commercial sex work for a long and their experiences. Also, the rehabilitated prostitutes who had experience in commercial sex work will be asked. In addition, questions will be asked to the key informants.

Frequency of participation. These measures are rated on a Likert-type scale of 0-3 (0= never, 1= once, 2=two or three times, 3=for or more times). Response scale will be used where 1-4(0=do does not engage in sexual activities, 1= hardly, ever /never, 2= often, 3=at least once per month, 4=at least once per week). This assessment will be offered once only the frequency of engagement in sexual activity.

Dependency cues scale. Respondents will choose yes or no based on whether it applied tonier participation in commercial sex work during the past 2years. After rehabilitation, I am getting back into commercial sex work—the level of dependency scale of involvement in commercial sex work. About the Likert type scale, 0-3(0=not at all to 3 =describes me very well). An example question is, “If I go too long without engaging in sexual activity, I will notice a mild desire to have sex that I can ignore.

Procedure

Respondents will be recruited by purposeful snowballing, and only participants who are commercial sex workers will be invited to participate. The participants will be paid a flat fee of $15 upon completing the study survey (Benedetti et al., 2020). The proposed study is designed to take 45mimutes to complete. The face-to-face interview will be done with interested participants after a letter of closure has been given or a warranty letter that seeks their consent.

Conclusion

The independent variable will be psychological factors contributing to commercial sex work among teenage girls. The dependent variable will be scores on or outcomes of commercial sex work that as the frequency of participation in prostitution, level of physical dependence scale on prostitution, and individuals’ dependence on prostitution. The proposed study predicts that psychological factors are the significant reasons behind participation in commercial sex work. Therefore, future studies should explore whether commercial sex work psychological factors influence participation in commercial sex work among teenagers (Nemoto et al., 2011). As stated above, snowballing based on the purpose of the study will be used to get the desired sample population for the examination before collecting data.

A Pearson’s correlation will be used to understand further the relationship between the psychological factors and participation in commercial sex work, frequency of engaging in sexual activities, and level of dependency among the individuals participating in commercial sex work. Standard descriptive statistics will collaborate with skewness and kurtosis to calculate the z-scores (Deering et al., 2014). Assumption checks will be conducted by measuring the variable as interval and ratio continue. Leaner relationships will be checked based on the assumptions by studying the relationships between the variables and the normalcy of the data distribution. Pearson’s correlations will be run using SPSS when none of the premises is violated. However, Non-parametric Spear’s man correlation will be used if the data is not linear.

To justify the strength of the direct relationship between the psychological factors and participation in commercial sex work, a biserial point correlation will be used only when one of the variables is dichotomous, for example, when the respondents answer yes or no questions. Point biserial also depends on assumptions that confirm that one variable is continuous and the other is dichotomous. It also demands normal distribution of data with equal variances.

The expected results should show a relationship between psychological factors contributing to commercial sex work and a higher frequency of participation in sexual activities. Results should show that there is a higher dependency on prostitution among teenagers. (Shareck et al., 2021)

Therefore, the future implication will seek to find out the influence of psychological factors on commercial sex work and maybe help the participants be aware of the consequences of engaging in commercial sex work. It will also help the government formulate and revise the current policies to help fight against child prostitution. The study will help policymakers draft policies and identify gaps in the current guidelines on commercial sex work to assist in the fight against child commercial sex work.

References

Benedetti, F., Frisaldi, E., Barbiani, D., Camerone, E., & Shaibani, A. (2020). Nocebo and the contribution of psychosocial factors to the generation of pain. Journal of Neural Transmission, 127(4), 687-696.

Benoit, C., Jansson, S. M., Smith, M., & Flagg, J. (2018). Prostitution stigma and its effect on the working conditions, personal lives, and health of sex workers. The Journal of Sex Research, 55(4-5), 457-471.

Deering, K. N., Amin, A., Shoveller, J., Nesbitt, A., Garcia-Moreno, C., Duff, P.,… & Shannon, K. (2014). A systematic review of the correlates of violence against sex workers. American journal of public health, 104(5), e42-e54.

DuBois, L. Z., Gibb, J. K., Juster, R. P., & Powers, S. I. (2021). Biocultural approaches to transgender and gender diverse experience and health: Integrating biomarkers and advancing gender/sex research. American Journal of Human Biology, 33(1), e23555.

Gemmati, D., Varani, K., Bramanti, B., Piva, R., Bonaccorsi, G., Trentini, A.,… & Bellini, T. (2019). “Bridging the gap” is everything that could have been avoided if we had applied gender medicine, pharmacogenetics, and personalized medicine in the gender-omics and sex-omics era—International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(1), 296.

Haider, A., Bengs, S., Luu, J., Osto, E., Siller-Matula, J. M., Muka, T., & Gebhard, C. (2020). Sex and gender in cardiovascular medicine: presentation and outcomes of the acute coronary syndrome. European heart journal, 41(13), 1328-1336.

MarÃa del Carmen, P. Ã., & del Mar Molero-Jurado, M. (2018). Analysis of burnout predictors in nursing: risk and protective psychological factors. European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 11(1), 33-40.

Marston, K. J., Brown, B. M., Rainey-Smith, S. R., & Peiffer, J. J. (2019). Resistance exercise-induced responses in physiological factors linked with cognitive health. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 68(1), 39-64.

Nemoto, T., Bödeker, B., & Iwamoto, M. (2017). Social support, exposure to violence and transphobia, and correlates of depression among male-to-female transgender women with a history of sex work. American journal of public health, 101(10), 1980-1988

Picos, A. P., González, R. P., & de la Iglesia Gutierrez, M. (2018). Exploring causes and consequences of sex workers’ psychological health: Implications for health care policy. A study conducted in Spain. Health care for women international, 39(8), 844-858.

Roan, K. (2019). Intersex or diverse sex development: Critical review of psychosocial health care research and indications for practice. The Journal of Sex Research, 56(4-5), 511-528.

Shareck, M., Hassan, M., Buhariwala, P., Perri, M., Balla, E., & O’Campo, P. (2021). Double jeopardy: Maintaining livelihoods or preserving health? The tough choices sex worker faced during the COVID-19 pandemic—Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, 12, 21501327211031760.

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