Research participants!

Page to link researchers with participants for various projects including surveys, focus groups etc. See below for research projects/needs assessments currently being conducted.

Call for participants:

'SWERV! The Sex Workers Evaluate Reporting Violence' research project

A research initiative between health researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and National Ugly Mugs (NUM), in collaboration with Brunel University. Together with the meaningful involvement of sex workers across the UK, we will evaluate how membership and engagement with NUM services affect sex workers’ safety, mental health and wellbeing.

We are looking for people who are not NUM members to take part in a short online survey. We will pay them £20 for that via any payment method that works for them. We will also pay them £10 for each person they refer and who completes the survey up to 3 referrals. We are also doing hour long qualitative interviews and paying people £50 for this. The parameters are that they have sold in-person sex in the last 6 months, have worked in a large town or city, are not NUM members and are over 18.

Our website https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/swerv#about tells you more detail, also information documents below regarding contact details etc.

SWERV WP C Information sheet.pdf

Download PDF • 178KB

Flyer for recruitment SWERV_v1.pdf

Download PDF • 121KB

Call for participants - are you:

Over 18?

Someone who has sex worked or traded sex in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales?

Please help us to improve the law and safety for sex workers. Take the survey here: https://forms.office.com/r/tmNkEMbeyA

The survey is confidential and anonymous. It will take 20 minutes. Thank you!

Want to know more?

This survey is part of a major international research study.

We are asking about your experiences of unwanted sexual contact, so that we can help increase our understanding of sexual violence and improve access to justice and services for sex workers.

The survey is available in English, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese. (Easy Read, Thai and Filipino are coming soon!).

This project has been designed with sex workers and sex worker support organisations, It is approved by the Ethics Committees in five Universities. The research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. For more information visit: https://www.sexworkandsexualviolence.com/

Or email us: swsvsupport-project@strath.ac.uk

The SWSV Research Team

Student Research

My name is Molly Simpson and I'm currently beginning a research project for my MSc Criminology course at Teesside University. This project will be a questionnaire to assess the effects of UK policies on the safety of sex workers from the perspective of those who work to support them.

All answers and results from the research are kept strictly confidential and the results will be reported as part of my final project and can be made available to all participants on completion. If this is possible please could you e-mail me at T7277680@live.tees.ac.uk to confirm that you or your employees are willing to participate

I have provided a link to the questionnaire if you are interested in taking part: https://teesside.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/the-impact-of-uk-policy-on-the-safety-of-sex-workers The Impact of UK Policy on the Safety of Sex Workers Online survey BOS teesside.onlinesurveys.ac.uk

Survey launch: sex work online safety advice project

By Kate Worthington 21st June 2021

Since 2015, the Revenge Porn Helpline has been supporting victims of intimate image abuse in the UK and those who have had intimate images taken, shared, or threatened to be shared without consent.

Within this time, the Helpline has become worldwide experts on tackling intimate image abuse and supporting victims of non-consensual sharing of private sexual content. We have supported over 10,000 UK victims, worked to remove 204,000 pieces of content, and built strong and significant relationships with social media and adult industry partners. The creation of the Helpline followed the introduction of the law which criminalises the distribution of private sexual images and videos without consent if this is done with the intention to cause distress. Whilst this law exists to protect victims of intimate image abuse, the wording of this legislation has its problems and doesn’t cover all grounds. You can read more about this here and the current review being undertaken by the Law Commission.

This law defines a ‘private image’ as something that is not of a kind ordinarily seen in public. If the image/video has been shared publicly or made accessible so a member of the public can view it, it is no longer considered private and therefore this law cannot be used to protect that victim. This has created a somewhat grey area of our work and a limitation on what the Helpline can do to support in cases where a ‘non-private’ image has been shared without consent. Over the past few years, we have seen a substantial rise in these types of cases from adult content creators, but also other issues too. This includes instances of voyeurism (being recorded performing a sexual act without knowledge or consent), threats to share sexual images, using sexual images to blackmail or ‘out’ an individual’s status as a sex worker or content creator. We have also seen the rise of non-image-based issues such as online stalking, harassment, and doxing. Whilst we know this is not a new issue, it is on the rise, and the support available in this field of online harms is currently inadequate.

To plug this gap where practical support is limited, we have teamed up with our sister service, Report Harmful Content (RHC), to develop a new project. This project aims to produce a website resource to become a hub of preventative advice, practical solutions, informative content, and signposting based on the experiences of sex workers and those supporting sex workers in the UK. We believe in supporting all victims of online harm and intimate image abuse, including the online abuse of sex workers and content creators even if their content may fall outside the law as it stands. Online spaces should be a safe space for all and we aim to collate advice on preventative tools and practical solutions for everyone to navigate these spaces safely.

Our services have an immense wealth of experience and understanding of online harms and dealing with reports of online abuse. Whilst we have extensive and successful experience working with intimate content, we can rely on the knowledge of RHC, whose work supports the UK public to report other forms of harmful content seen online and provide impartial dispute resolution. The strong relationships we have built with various services and platforms including social media, dating sites, content creation sites, and adult platforms have enabled us to create trusted flagger pathways to ensure content is quickly reviewed alongside the platform's terms of service resulting in a 93% takedown rate across both helplines.

To ensure this project is fully informed and providing the advice needed by sex workers, content creators, and support organisations, we have enlisted the research expertise from the University of Leicester to conduct a needs assessment. This three-fold needs assessment will speak with sex workers and content creators with lived experience of these issues, support organisations and practitioners helping to manage issues, and adult content platforms. This survey is open to anyone in the UK who has lived experience of sex work to investigate their experiences of online harms and image abuse. ‘Sex work’ is a broad term but we’re using this to encompass all those with any type of experience within the sex work and content creation industry.

If you work with sex workers or content creators within a supporting role capacity and would like to be involved, please get in touch with the project researcher, Gaynor Trueman, for more information: gt151@leicester.ac.uk. Please find the participant information sheet and survey here.

Newcastle City Council Sexual Health Online survey

What do you think about the non-clinical sexual health services in the community?

Non-clinical services are offered in the community to help support your sexual health and well-being. These services cover a wide range of sexual health issues and offer people support, advice and information, STI testing (sexually transmitted infections including HIV), outreach and signposting people to relevant services. Non-clinical sexual health services do not include treatment but can help people access treatment through the clinical sexual health services.

Newcastle’s City Council Public Health Sexual Health Team want to find out what people involved in the adult entertainment/sex industry within the Newcastle area think about these non-clinical sexual health services, what you like about them, and any suggestions you have about how the services could work better to meet your needs. Please tell us your views of the non-clinical sexual health services by completing the survey here. The survey is completely anonymous, closing date is the 6th June 2021.

If you would like to get help, advice and services for your sexual health and well-being, you can find out more about what is available from services, organisations and helplines here: https://tinyurl.com/3vdrybvt

University of Plymouth

I am a PhD researcher based at the University of Plymouth, I am interested in how transgender people experience and make decisions around work, as we can face hostility in the workplace for a number of reasons. In particular I am interested in the way transgender people involved in sex work experience and think about their work. I am openly transgender myself (trans male) however I have no personal history of sex work.

This study aims to provide a range of institutional professionals and practitioners with a clear understanding of sex work (and work outside sex work) as transgender people experience it. Policy makers and practitioners need to be better informed about the needs and concerns of transgender people, including transgender sex workers. Their knowledge and understanding of these issues can be poor, even if they genuinely want to help. This makes it difficult for transgender people to access adequate support when it is needed, as professionals don’t always understand how to best meet our needs.

More information provided below:

Recruitment Information & Guide (1).docx

Download DOCX • 220KB