SWEAT Instrument

The good news first: We received approval from the University of California San Francisco's Committee on Human Research to ask all the questions we wanted. Hooray! Now, the realistic news: We wanted to ask too many questions.

Earlier this week Ginger and I did a practice run through of the instrument in CAPI (Computer Administered Personal Interview) and at an hour and a half into it, we barely were half way through the interview and both of us had lost interest. This does not bode well for the participants. So, it is back to the editing board. Deb, Ginger and I met yesterday and did an initial cutting of questions. After processing those edits, it is clear that we will need to cut some more. The last thing we want is an excessive interview. The plus side to this is that i already had all the questions entered into the software program, so once we cut the extra questions i won't have to do much work in the program aside from deletion and fixing some skip patterns.

SWEAT in Vegas

Wow, has it really been this long since the last post? I do apologize and promise you that the delay does not mean we have not been busy.

The beginning of July found Ginger and Alix in Las Vegas, Nevada for the Re-visioning Prostitution Policy Conference. To find out more about the conference, go here: Conference Info

At the conference, Alix gave the presentation "The SWEAT Project: Female Sex Workers’ perspectives on systems of criminalization, decriminalization, and legalization." Does anyone reading this know how to post a power point presentation to a blog? If so, let me know, as i would love to share the presentation with you. In the mean time, if you would like a copy of the presentation, send me your e-mail address and i will forward it to you. As a sneak preview, here is the abstract for the presentation:

This presentation will focus on the findings from the first phase of the SWEAT (Sex Worker Environmental Assessment Team) research project conducted by UCSF in conjunction with SJI. In this first phase we conducted 60 one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with current sex workers of all genders (female = 40; men = 10; TG = 10). For the purpose of this presentation, I will explore the female participants' reflections on what they would like to see changed, if anything, with the current policy of criminalization. 30 of the women shared their perspectives on this topic. Of these 30 women, 2 shared the benefits that accompany decriminalization and criminalization, 2 shared the benefits of criminalization and some other type of system, 34 responses were given. 14 wanted some change but did not specify a preference for decriminalization or legalization, 8 advocated for decriminalization, and 2 spoke to their desire to see sex work legalized. Interestingly, 10 (33.33%) of the women preferred that sex work remain criminalized. I will explore the reasons that influence the women's responses and discuss the ways in which this information can inform decriminalization efforts.

We at SWEAT were grateful to have the opportunity to share this important information with the conference attendees and you.