Sexual Partners of Street-Based Female Sex Workers in St. Petersburg, Russia

A Model of Partnership Characteristics as a Basis for Further Research

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8960784
AutoresOlga Levina (0000-0001-8077-4505, St. Petersburg Department of Steklov Institute of Mathematics, autor de correspondencia), Olga S Levina (Head of the Research Department, Stellit, an NGO, St. Petersburg, Russia), Robert Heimer (0000-0003-0589-6697, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut), Veronika Odinokova (0000-0002-9850-9109, Head of the Research Department, Stellit, an NGO, St. Petersburg, Russia), Zinaida D Bodanovskaya (St. Petersburg Department of Steklov Institute of Mathematics), Zinaida Bodanovskaya (Stellit, an NGO, St. Petersburg, Russia), Liliya Safiullina (Stellit, an NGO, St. Petersburg, Russia), Kevin S Irwin (Tufts University Community Health Program, Medford, Massachusetts), Linda M Niccolai (0000-0003-2969-3157, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut)
Año2012
Volumen71
Número1
Páginas32-43
Fecha de publicación2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHuman Organization (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-7259 • E-ISSN: 1938-3517
EditorialSociety for Applied Anthropology (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.17730/humo.71.1.9130380u68614w47
PMID25741032
OpenAlexW2091939806
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas23

Street-based sex work in Russia, as in many countries, carries with it a high risk for violence and the transmission of infectious diseases. The male partners of female sex workers are both cause and recipient of such risks. Because little is known about the men, we undertook a preliminary study to determine the feasibility of recruiting and interviewing them, develop typologies that describe partners, and derive hypotheses for further study and risk reduction intervention projects. We were able to conduct open-ended, qualitative interviews with street-based sex workers and, largely through these contacts, their male partners. To these data, we added interviews with social work and medical experts who engage with the sex workers. The text of interviews from 37 respondents were analyzed to identify commonly mentioned partner characteristics in five distinct domains: sociodemographics, behavioral patterns of the partners, motivations in seeking sex services, levels of partner engagement with the sex workers, and the social circumstances that moderate the engagement. Four of the five domains (all but sociodemographics) proved useful in identifying typologies that were best described as populated points in a matrix generated from the intersection of the four domains. The data were too limited to specify which of the points in the matrix are most common, but the points populated are useful in generating hypotheses for further study and in identifying potential avenues for risk reduction interventions

Family medicine · General partnership · Intervention (counseling · Interview · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychological intervention · Qualitative research · Sex work · Social science · Sociology · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Medicine · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology