Workin' on the instrument

Since the last post, we have all been busy finalizing the interview instrument. While this is an amazingly tedious process, it is also extremely exciting. This is our chance to create an interview instrument that addresses all the realities individuals experience as sex workers. We are being extremely mindful of the terms we use, and how we phrase our questions to prevent influencing the responses we get. Once we agree that we have completed the instrument, we will then give it to our (soon to exist) community advisory board for feedback. Then, we will incorporate their feedback and be ready to submit it to the Internal Review Board for approval.

In addition to this process, Abby has been busy becoming a pro at the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing software we will use to administer the interview. The great thing about this software is it will help prevent data entry errors during the interview, and prevent data entry errors later since we will not have to enter the information from a paper form.

Ginger has been hard at work creating Sexually Transmitted Infection Information sheets to make available for the research participants. What is truly great about these sheets is that she put not only the standard Western medical information and advice, but also established non-Western advice.

Welcome to our Blog!

This Blog will keep you up-to-date on what is happening with the SWEAT study. The University of California San Francisco (www.ucsf.edu) along with St. James Infirmary (www.stjamesinfirmary.org) conducts the SWEAT study, which stands for Sex Worker Environmental Assessment Team. What the study hopes to determine is whether diminished social capital leads to an increased prevalence of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and viral hepatitis among female sex workers in San Francisco, CA.

In the first phase of the study, we used ethnographic methods to understand the cultural landscape of the sex worker communities in San Francisco. This involved participant-observation, 60 one-on-one semi-structured interviews with sex workers of all genders, 6 focus groups, and a community agency analysis to understand the social context in which sex work occurs.

The second phase will use respondent driven sampling (RDS) to interview and test approximately 450 female sex workers. The way RDS works is that we will pick 4-6 initial seeds (these are people who represent a range of sex work experience), they will come in for the interview and screening, and then we pay them to recruit up to three of their female sex worker friends.

After completion of the second phase, we will conduct a multi-level analysis that will consist of an individual-level analysis and a network-level analysis. We will then evaluate the network-level association between degree of social capital and aggregated prevalence of HIV, STIs, and hepatitis.