Is it really this bad? (SP life)

[FunSugarDaddy]

My thoughts are that regardless of this woman's views, this is a shotty piece of journalism.

Why would they go and publish data as if it's factually accurate when this woman has no idea how to go about conducting a scientific study. The very least they could have done was consulted someone at a university who has studied this issue, god knows there are plenty who have.

Even at that, my feeling is that most of the people who conduct these type of studies go into it with a bias that this industry simply exploits women, and that none of them are engaging in this service of their own free will.

My personal experience, is that this is simply wrong and a fair number of women choose this occupation and don't feel exploited.

Not sure of the percentages but I do know her figures don't represent the reality I've experienced.

 

[maroonedsailor]

My thoughts are that regardless of this woman's views, this is a shotty piece of journalism.

Why would they go and publish data as if it's factually accurate when this woman has no idea how to go about conducting a scientific study. The very least they could have done was consulted someone at a university who has studied this issue, god knows there are plenty who have.

Even at that, my feeling is that most of the people who conduct these type of studies go into it with a bias that this industry simply exploits women, and that none of them are engaging in this service of their own free will.

My personal experience, is that this is simply wrong and a fair number of women choose this occupation and don't feel exploited.

Not sure of the percentages but I do know her figures don't represent the reality I've experienced.

Once again, It's only a shoddy piece of journalism if it's intent was to tell the truth. Since it is really a thinly disguised press release for a profit driven book, it doesn't really qualify as journalism at all. (IMHO)

 

[Fractals]

Range of percentages are provided to take into account the margin of error associated with survey study results. It is good practice to provide that in reports. Usually, when results are reported, a point estimate is provided along with the confidence interval, for example it could be that the point-estimate is 80% and that the 95% confidence interval is between 65 to 95%. What that means is that if you do the survey over and over using the same methodology, you could expect to get a number between 65 and 95, most of the time and some of the time (5%) you could be wrong.

No survey is perfectly reliabile nor accurate due to many factors including the ones you identified. The best a survey researcher could hope for is that his sample provides information/estimates about the population he is studying with some acceptable degree of confidence.

 

[steverino]

The confidence interval estimation only accounts for sampling error. Given all of the other sources of possible error not acounted for I would not put much stock in the results.

 

[susi]

in my opinion, this woman is a poverty pimp. she lost it all, probably treated her workers like shit and now sees the potential for profit in crying victim. the religious zealots will pay alot to hear someone say what they want to hear.

also, the average age of entry into prostitution being 14 was debunked by justice himmel, one of the very useful facts in the decision. the research study sample group was made up of children between the ages of 11 and 17. the researchers never spoke to any adult sex industry workers, only exploited youth.

she is full of shit and is the worst kind of profiteer we face. people actually paying a former admitted trafficker if you will allowing her to profit from the women she harmed, in her own words, and their experiences again.

in terms of varied experiences in this industry, definitly. not everyone is cut out for it emotionally. for me the key is make sure people understand their choices for working in the sex industry and that they choose and area they are physically and emotionally comfortable with.

for instance if a worker finds full contact one on one encounters with gentlemen purchasing their services unpleasant or beyond their boundaries, they may want to consider an area of the industry that doesn't require contact, like web cam or adult film where its limited contact.

in the end many of the issues evolving in our industry would be adressed by ensuring people are given the tools to make informed decisions about where in the industry they work and how to be safe in that work. by workers i mean drivers, booking girls,bouncers, dancers, escorts...everyone.

people die in the mining industry, forrestry,fisheries,oil....do we abolish them because people get hurt? or are exploited?

no, we implement labour law and occupational health and safety to protect ethical businesses and workers from harm. we don't criminalize an entire industry because God said so....

this woman is jumping on the human trafficking band wagon and the zealots will eat it up, disgusting. it's like watching a car crash, people can't turn away. they want to hear about all the harm and pain we've suffered, they like to hear it.

i for one do not talk about those parts of my life any more when i speak publically excpet in the loosest of terms. it sickened me to watch the faces of the people i was presenting to as they recoiled in revulsion and clung to every word. during questions afterwards, people would ask for more detail from my assaults. what the fuck man? did you not have any questions about how we could fix things?

anyway that's me, the burnaby now isn't exactly prestigious in terms of publications so let's just hope she's dead in the water before she gets to far. people are less and less willing it seems to except this talibanesque view of things...

i mean, God forbid a woman be finacially stable and independent....someone impregnate them strumpettes and get 'em married up quick!!

love susieXXXO

 

[Pillowtalk]

This is how I came back to the industry (sick family member - I don't have children).

I am someone in my 20s and I'll admit that I do like to party (drinking, not drugs) from time to time because it's fun, not for escapism. Even if I was still holding down my high stress day job, I'd STILL be out on the odd weekend here or there tearing up the dance floor

These numbers are completely exaggerated in an attempt to sell her novel. Good news isn't always what people want to read or hear. Take the newspapers or the news for example......how often is it that we get to read or hear segments about how the world is doing great and everything's OK? RARELY.

She's trying to sell her book by selling scandal if you ask me.

I would be surprised if any person in their early 20's didn't like to go out and have a good time, even if it includes drinking and possibly a drug or two.
To extrapolate and say that all sps must be doing it because they are sps is just one of many offensive things this person has to say.
But she also lost me with this:

(The sex industry) is causing alarming divorce rates, teen pregnancies, STDs-AIDS, drug usage, not to mention altered views of what sex really means."

Seriously? Sps are responsible for teen pregnancies? And they also brought STDs/Aids into existence? Considering even HIV experts research results say the exact opposite (that sex workers have a lower percentage of stds compared to the general population), that is alot of blame being laid there. I suppose this quote is out of context and has been changed (the part in parenthesis) to fit the story, and what was meant to be said was that the entire sex industry, including porn, not sps?

She also lost me with the stats, which were pulled out of nowhere. Apparently the average length of time in the biz is 21 years?? Really?? For all sps everywhere? So not only do they start at 14, they are working up until and without a break until they are in their mid-30's. To that end, then there must be a thousands or more sps in their 30's out there right now, along with the 15 year olds and the 22 year olds, and all the other ages, so there must literally be 10's of thousands of sps working indoors and outdoors in just the vancouver area.

So why's it so hard for you guys to find an sp?


And I would be surprised if no one knows who this is; she was a member off and on for years, got banned, would come back with a new version of that same name lol. Blonde, brunette, whatever, that massive chest must bring back other people's memories lol. Once you make that connection, then you will agree with susi there who talk about how this one tries to make a profit.

 

[vancity_cowboy]

i mean, God forbid a woman be finacially stable and independent....someone impregnate them strumpettes and get 'em married up quick!!

heh, heh... that's where i come in... lol i mean the impregnating part

seriously, thanks for shedding some light on this travesty of an article on the biz - +1 susie

as usual, yellow journalism is to blame for the shortcomings of the 'statistics' quoted

 

[*emmanuelle]

If you ask 100 people a question you don't get a RANGE of percentages!

Actually yes you do, it's called the margin of error. It expresses the amount of random sampling error (in other words, the fact that you can't be sure that your sample was 100% representative of the population)

BTW great post Eva, I totally agree with you.

 

[*emmanuelle]

How would you get a range of percentages? If you got 65 yes's would it not be 65%?

I will give a shot at explaining this.

Basically if you want to say something significant about prostitutes in Vancouver, it is impossible to interview every single prostitute, so you have to pick a sample (say, 100 prostititutes)
Now you have two groups: Every prostitute in Vancouver (called the POPULATION) and the 100 girls you chose (called the SAMPLE) The problem is, you can't really know that the 100 girls you chose are representative of the population, in other words, that they have the same distribution of significant properties (age, background, number of years in the industry, etc etc) Let's say you found all of your 100 girls working on the street: does that mean that this group will have the same distribution of history of abuse as the entire population of prostitutes in Vancouver? No. That's why you need to use a range of percentages.

Let's say that 65 out of your 100 girls said they had been abused as children. That is 65%, or .65
Now you take .65x(1-.65) = .35 ----> .65x.35 = .2275
Then you take that sum over 100 (=0.002275) and find the square root. 0.0476........ (let's call that 5%)
This is one standard deviation (in other words, that's what it means when someone says "plus or minus x%"

If you want to have high confidence in your results, you multiply your findings for 3 standard deviations (in this case, that would be 15%)

So now instead of having 65%, you have between a range of 50% - 80%

 

[*emmanuelle]

How would you get a "random sampling error" if the group wasn't random? If you targeted a specific group of people there would BE no random.

Color me confoosed ...

"randomness" in statistics just means that each person from the population has an equal chance of being chosen for the sample group. Hope that helps

 

[FunSugarDaddy]

It's been some 20 years since I last took a stats class so I'm admittedly rusty about some of the nuances, but isn't this why the sample has to be random?

meaning if you had the names of say 1000 SP's and randomly chose 100, then presumably this would mirror the population, even if you weren't sure what the population was. If you actually knew that your sample wasn't random I don't think it would even be meaningful, regardless of what the results were.

You would still get a margin of error, but it wouldn't be to account of the lack of randomness that you indicated, it's simply a function of not having access to the entire population, along with the inherent flaws in any bell curve type of analysis.

Anyway I'm ready to be schooled.

I will give a shot at explaining this.

Basically if you want to say something significant about prostitutes in Vancouver, it is impossible to interview every single prostitute, so you have to pick a sample (say, 100 prostititutes)
Now you have two groups: Every prostitute in Vancouver (called the POPULATION) and the 100 girls you chose (called the SAMPLE) The problem is, you can't really know that the 100 girls you chose are representative of the population, in other words, that they have the same distribution of significant properties (age, background, number of years in the industry, etc etc) Let's say you found all of your 100 girls working on the street: does that mean that this group will have the same distribution of history of abuse as the entire population of prostitutes in Vancouver? No. That's why you need to use a range of percentages.

Let's say that 65 out of your 100 girls said they had been abused as children. That is 65%, or .65
Now you take .65x(1-.65) = .35 ----> .65x.35 = .2275
Then you take that sum over 100 (=0.002275) and find the square root. 0.0476........ (let's call that 5%)
This is one standard deviation (in other words, that's what it means when someone says "plus or minus x%"

If you want to have high confidence in your results, you multiply your findings for 3 standard deviations (in this case, that would be 15%)

So now instead of having 65%, you have between a range of 50% - 80%

 

[*emmanuelle]

if you had the names of say 1000 SP's and randomly chose 100, then presumably this would mirror the population, even if you weren't sure what the population was. If you actually new that your sample wasn't random I don't think it would even be meaningful, regardless of what the results were.

This is a good question. Finding a truly random sample is actually a really hard thing to do. Even random number generators work on an algorithm.
In your example, you name 1000 SPs, but where did you get their names from? That selection has to random as well, if it's going to be representative.
So yes, if you were actually able to find the name of every single prostitute in Vancouver, then (truly) randomly select 100 from the list AND convince all 100 of those girls to participate, you would be a lot more confident of your results and would only need to use one standard deviation.

 

[steverino]

You are correctly "confoosed" chevy. You can only express sampling error if the sample was randomly selected from the population of interest. If that is the case then the graphs showing confidence intervals presented by Emmy would explain sampling error. It is also key to remember that non-sampling error is not part of the calculation and likely to contribute to any data validity issues. Non-sampling error includes things like ambiguity around question meaning or poorly constructed questions in general, data entry errors and misunderstanding of the scales offered in the questions.

 

[badbadboy]

Actually yes you do, it's called the margin of error. It expresses the amount of random sampling error (in other words, the fact that you can't be sure that your sample was 100% representative of the population)

BTW great post Eva, I totally agree with you.

oooh, I like this woman!

Really smart with the right answer and dead sexy too!

Great post.

 

[FunSugarDaddy]

Well my comments were directed more at the publishers of Burnaby Now than the author who obviously is biased. But the editor of any newspaper should be aware of this and check that any stats are valid, or at least get some idea of the qualification of those presenting these stats.

Once again, It's only a shoddy piece of journalism if it's intent was to tell the truth. Since it is really a thinly disguised press release for a profit driven book, it doesn't really qualify as journalism at all. (IMHO)

 

[jnewton]

I will give a shot at explaining this.

Basically if you want to say something significant about prostitutes in Vancouver, it is impossible to interview every single prostitute, so you have to pick a sample (say, 100 prostititutes)
Now you have two groups: Every prostitute in Vancouver (called the POPULATION) and the 100 girls you chose (called the SAMPLE) The problem is, you can't really know that the 100 girls you chose are representative of the population, in other words, that they have the same distribution of significant properties (age, background, number of years in the industry, etc etc) Let's say you found all of your 100 girls working on the street: does that mean that this group will have the same distribution of history of abuse as the entire population of prostitutes in Vancouver? No. That's why you need to use a range of percentages.

Let's say that 65 out of your 100 girls said they had been abused as children. That is 65%, or .65
Now you take .65x(1-.65) = .35 ----> .65x.35 = .2275
Then you take that sum over 100 (=0.002275) and find the square root. 0.0476........ (let's call that 5%)
This is one standard deviation (in other words, that's what it means when someone says "plus or minus x%"

If you want to have high confidence in your results, you multiply your findings for 3 standard deviations (in this case, that would be 15%)

So now instead of having 65%, you have between a range of 50% - 80%

Brains AND Beauty ... Dangerous!

 

[Prospero]

Hi, upon reading this my thoughts were similar to the posts above. Her experience is her own experience, but what gets me is the study results she sites. Particularly, where does she get these study results? Who did them? What was the motivation of the researcher? If she herself did them, I wouldn't call them credible as she isn't qualified and she would have a clear bias. Studies should be cited with references and I see none of that on her website, which, on the whole discredits her claims. Furthermore, for all we know she could have made them up to suite her agenda. And what is more, to provide a more balanced report she would have cited at least three different studies. For example, not sure if any of you read awhile back Daphne Brahman's column in the Sun where she was harping on about Craig's List and the evils of prostitution and she cited on particular study to prove her point. A professor at SFU's criminology department, John Lohman took her to task about her shoddy journalism and the lone study she cited saying that it was a flawed study and that she neglected other studies that would have shed a different light on her claims.

 

[Fractals]

Fractals:
Obviously I don't know too much about surveys, I'll certainly give you that, but if you asked 100 SP's "Were you abused as a child? Yes or no". How would you get a range of percentages? If you got 65 yes's would it not be 65%? Maybe survey\pollsters have to have some formula to account for lying? Over my head.

You are right, the survey result in your example should return 65%, which is what is referred to in quantitative research as the point-estimate. I was just trying to explain that range of percentages are provided, and is considered good practice in research (and I'm not saying the author of the book in question produced a well-researched book), to emphasize that the point-estimate is just that, an estimate of what the actual value in the population is, an estimate that is subject to some error. Following your example, when a researcher surveys 100 sps, that researcher usually wants to be able to say with some degree of confidence that the results applies to a bigger population of sps. Much like what surveyors do in election polls where they survey thousands of voters to be able to predict how the million voters will behave come election time. The margin of error is something researchers set at the very beginning of the research and will help determine what the adequate sample size should be. The margin of error will also influence how big the range of percentages (called confidence intervals) a researcher will most likely get when he/she analyzes the results.

On a different note, Susi, in her posts above make a good point about the validity of the claim about the average age of entry into the trade. While the research may be sound and credible, the claim that the results are generalizable to all sps is inappropriate as the study sample was clearly not representative of the bigger population of sps. A responsible writer of the study results could say that AMONG children, the average age of entry into the trade is 14. However, claiming that the average age of entry is 14 for all sps is something short of lying.

 

[FunSugarDaddy]

I'd personally go one step futher and define children. Does that mean under 16? which is the legal age of consent, or under 18? which is generally thought of as the legal age to engage in providing sexual services for money. And if one knew what percentage of escorts were considered "children", relative to the population, that would also help put this into context.

 

[Fractals]

Brains AND Beauty ... Dangerous!

Now I know who to see to fulfill that fantasy about making out with a hot teacher