SAGE Research Methods Cases

SAGE Research Methods Cases Recruiting, Sampling and Data Collection with Difficult Populations: Clients of Male Sex Workers

Contributors: Victor Minichiello & Denton Callander & John Scott Book Title: SAGE Research Methods Cases Chapter Title: "Recruiting, Sampling and Data Collection with Difficult Populations: Clients of Male Sex Workers" Pub. Date: 20140512 Access Date: June 30, 2014 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Ltd. City: London Print ISBN: Online ISBN: 9781446273050

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305014529496 ©2013 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

SAGE AUTHORS ©2013 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SAGE Research Methods

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305014529496

Recruiting, Sampling and Data Collection with Difficult Populations: Clients of Male Sex Workers Link to the Research Output •

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Scott, J., Callander, D., & Minichiello, V. (2013). New and old pleasures and dangers: Re-inventing male sex work. Journal of Sex Research, 13, 263– 275. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2012.760189 Scott, J., Callander, D., & Minichiello, V. (in press). Understanding the clients of male sex workers. In V. Minichiello, ed. & J. Scott (Eds.), Male sex work and society. New York, NY: Harrington Park Press. Minichiello, V. & Scott, J. (in press). Male sex work and society. New York, NY: Harrington Park Press.

Although there are many potential new insights to be gained through advancing research on the clients of male sex workers, significant social, ethical and methodological challenges to accessing this population exist. This research project case explores our attempts to recruit a population that does not typically form a cohesive or coherent ‘community’ and often avoids self-identifying to mitigate the stigma attached to buying sex. We used an arms-length recruitment campaign that focussed on directing potential participants to our study website, which could in turn lead them to participate in an anonymous telephone interview. Barriers to reaching male sex-work clients, however, demanded the evolution of our recruitment strategy. New technologies are part of the solution to accessing a hard-to-reach population, but they only work if researchers engage responsively. We also show how we conducted an in-depth interview with a client and discuss the value of using secondary data.

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SAGE Research Methods Cases: Recruiting, Sampling and Data Collection with Difficult Populations: Clients of Male Sex Workers



Learning Outcomes By the end of the case study, you should • •

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Have a better understanding of the methodological challenges of studying population groups that are difficult to locate Understand the practicalities of recruiting samples and the work to be considered to ensure that the research is known to the target sample, including issues around confidentiality and anonymity Appreciate how to conduct in-depth interviews and use this method to delve into complex issues such as sexuality Learn the value of locating secondary sources in the public domain, including how to organise such information as a data source to answer specific research questions Anticipate ethics issues likely to be asked from an Ethics Committee

The Benefits and Challenges of Researching the Clients of Male Sex Workers Female sex workers have long been a focus for research in the social sciences. Relatively less attention has been given to male sex workers (MSWs), despite research suggesting that men or transgender people comprise approximately 10%-15% of the overall sex-worker population. While data on this group are lacking, international research has estimated that a single MSW services approximately 20 unique clients per week. Clients, however, have remained largely invisible in the research, and what is known about them has been derived predominantly from interviews with sex workers. The elusiveness of MSW clients is often attributed to stigmas of paying for sex and, for male clients, homosexuality.

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In sociological terms, understanding the worldviews of clients who use MSWs can help improve knowledge of sex work as an expression of male power, hegemonic masculinity and as a product of more diverse and even fragile forms of masculine expression. Here, sexual expression can be studied as a form of sexual pleasure between men and in relation to what escorts and clients do involving not just sex and an economic exchange but also complex human interactions, such as camaraderie and companionship. These interactions may allow researchers to delve into broader concepts such as masculinity, sexualities, individual agency and the impact of gender, age, race and sexual orientation on sexual choices. There are also serious challenges to public health emerging from the male sex industry, particularly within the context of sexual health. Poorly conceived regulation could discourage MSWs and their clients from accessing health care of preventive action to maintain good health and safer sexual interactions. More broadly, concerns around rising community infection rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections are sometimes conflated with concerns about the Internet and MSWs as vectors for unsafe sexual encounters among men. It appears that some sex workers and clients may not respond to the idea of completely eliminating unsafe sex, so harm-reduction strategies may require a new way of thinking about, understanding and explaining the personally motivated circumstances of unsafe and ambiguous sexual intentions. Successful public health campaigns need to understand the nuances of sexual intention and use health promotion that speak to the realities of complex and socially charged sexual decisionmaking processes. MSWs and their clients could provide a ‘hot spot’ at which to unravel these mysteries. While recognising the importance and potential value of attempting to engage with this population, MSW clients are difficult to locate and identify. You simply cannot find a list with the names of sex-work clients or easily get people to put up their hand to indicate that they have hired male escorts. The only people who can directly identify clients are the following: the clients themselves; sex workers, who may not always know the true identity details of the clients; and third parties, like escort agencies, who may not collect or be willing to divulge information about the identity of those who use the services of their establishment. Online, webmasters may collect information about those who use sex-work websites, but they may be legally prohibited from releasing this information, not to mention that there is a multitude of ways that one can disguise identity online. Page 5 of 23




Thus, the male sex industry is highly anonymous, and the reasons for this are obvious: the already-noted stigmas associated with buying sex and a culture of secrecy and discretion, which works to protect client identities. Making it even more difficult to locate clients is that they do not fit a neat or obvious profile. As with the clients of female sex workers, the men who hire MSWs are understood to be a diverse group. Marian Pitts et al. (2004) found little demographic or sexual history difference between clients of male escorts and their non-purchasing peers, with the exception that clients tended to be slightly older and better educated. Victor Minichiello et al. (1999) found that clients of MSWs are most commonly middle class and in their 20s to 60s, but age varies globally. In the United States, for example, research conducted by Brewer, Muth and Potterat (2008) suggests that younger men are more likely to engage MSWs, while research conducted by Belza et al. (2008) in Spain reported the opposite. A recent survey of an online MSW client community conducted by Christian Grov et al. (2013) characterised the ‘average’ client as White, middle-aged, single, HIV-negative, middle class and possibly gay-identified. To further complicate any attempts at profiling MSW clients, women appear to be a growing market. For all of the challenges and conceptual arguments in identifying and accessing the clients of MSWs, we decided to submit a research grant proposal to the Australian Research Council. We proposed a qualitative methodology that would consist of interviewing the clients of MSWs in an effort to address an obvious gap in our current knowledge about the sex industry. Our exploratory research was concerned with how social scripts of masculinity assist to structure the sex-work encounter. Specifically, our research aimed to (a) describe the sex-work experiences of MSW clients; (b) explain the context of the sexual sale and its relationship to masculinity, interactions between men and sexualities; (c) offer new insights into why some men seek commercial male sex and unsafe or safer sex encounters; and (d) identify gaps in our knowledge about the ways in which male commercial sex can help better explain masculinity, gender and sexualities. The following sections outline the ethical issues raised through our project, the recruitment method employed and the way in which data were collected.

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Ethical Considerations Our research required clearance from a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) prior to fieldwork being undertaken. Research on human sex and sexuality can raise unique ethical challenges, and indeed, one of the most well-known studies of human sexual activity, which is often cited as an example of poor research ethics, involved men who have sex with men. Laud Humphrey's (1970) The Tea Room Trade has been extensively criticised for its failure to gain the consent of subjects observed in sexual activity and for the use of false information to recruit research participants. With proper consideration, however, ethical issues of sexuality research can be anticipated, and we considered the risks associated with our study to be minimal. Informed consent was to precede every interview, and all potential participants were told that participation in the project was voluntary and that they could withdraw without prejudice and without reason at any time. For us, the primary ethical issue was to ensure privacy and confidentiality of participants and their contacts, as both clients and sex workers present as stigmatised populations. We were also aware of the need to conceal places where sex workers worked or congregated, as such information could lead to unwanted policing (in some jurisdictions) and/or media attention. It was also necessary to account for issues of legality, as sex work is restricted or illegal in some jurisdictions, and even in places where sex work is decriminalised, there may be a perception that it is illegal. Accordingly, we were asked by the HREC to consider mandatory reporting to government agencies should evidence of inappropriate or illegal activities become apparent during the research and to consider how this information could be reported concerning an ‘anonymous participant’. We successfully contested this concern on the basis that we considered it unlikely that we would be informed of any illegal activities. Furthermore, in Australia where we are based, sex work is not illegal in any jurisdiction, and we focussed on this in our response to the HREC. Our interview questions were designed to gather information about the sexual experiences of mature, sexually consenting adults. The idea that the clients of MSWs were more likely than other groups to engage in illegal activities appeared to be based on prejudicial beliefs about the sex industry and on the stigma attached to sex workers and their clients. We also noted that MSWs have been identified in the literature as a Page 7 of 23




highly educated, relatively prosperous, professional group who enter sex work as a career choice. The HREC reviewing our research was also concerned about the potential for psychological or emotional distress through taking part in our project. Although we assessed such risks to be low, the committee members were not convinced. We also challenged this finding and were successful on the grounds that participation was self-selecting and that the interview schedule did not invoke necessarily stressful topics. Furthermore, we also addressed the value-laden assumption that talking about the experiences of men who buy sex with other men might be more stressful than discussing other aspects of human behaviour. More broadly, the reactions of the HREC to sex/sexuality-focussed research, in our experience, displays elements of what has been termed ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004). It has been argued that in introducing a bureaucratic system to manage the risks of academic research, universities have assumed many of the characteristic deficiencies of bureaucracies, by adopting increased responsibilities while expanding and intensifying the regulatory structure of HRECs. Issues typically raised by HRECs involve ‘risk’, ‘harm’ and ‘consent’; however, such concepts are highly ambiguous and may be considered both subjective and political in the context of social science research. Indeed, it is held that the way in which judgments are formed by HRECs are rooted in reasoning more applicable to biomedical research as opposed to social sciences, which some researchers have argued are inherently ‘low risk’. For example, we felt that ‘risk’ was difficult to quantify or anticipate prior to commencing our research. While this did not prevent us from attempting to minimise risks, actual risks are never readily recognised prior to entering the field. To take the example of informed consent, it has been argued that this can curtail critical social science by closing down enquiry involving non-conformist cultures or powerful groups. Considering again the example of Humphrey's research cited previously, while there was potential for participants to be deceived by the researcher, the research was a landmark in the study of homosexuality and contributed to the liberation and equality agenda (Burr & Reynolds, 2010). One outcome of overly restrictive ethical protocols in the academy is that much critical research comes to be carried out by investigative journalists who face relatively fewer restrictions, despite, often, having less specialist knowledge of a field or population group. Page 8 of 23




Popular, academic and policy accounts of sex work have tended to present it as an inherently exploitative activity. In terms of female sex work, patriarchy and the economic exploitation of women have been emphasised, while with regard to MSW, clients have often been presented as older homosexual men intent on exploiting youth. These stereotypes have been perpetuated by much research on sex work drawing on readily accessible welfare-dependent, institutionalised, street and/or incarcerated populations. Such research has reinforced associations between sex work and factors contingent to sex work, such as drug use, violence, physical and psychological abuse and homelessness. Our experience negotiating the requirements and concerns of a university-run HREC is an example of how sex-work industry impressions can influence the ways in which people perceive research and the associated ethical issues.

The Practicalities: Recruitment and Participation The boundaries of the sex industry are unknown, so there is difficulty accessing representative samples of sex workers or clients. As noted above, clients do not form a readily identifiable or cohesive ‘community’ and are far from being a homogeneous group, despite the fact that new technologies have provided more opportunities for clients to network and interact. Traditionally, research has adopted snowball sampling, key-informant sampling and targeted sampling to address limitations to recruitment. To engage this hard-to-identify population, we developed a multi-stage recruitment and participation strategy that prioritised participant anonymity. Print and online advertisements were used to direct clients of MSWs to a study website where they could receive information about the project and obtain a free-call number, which could be used to participate in a telephone interview. This strategy, which is outlined in Figure 1, can be broken into three main components: advertisements, a website and a phone service. The following section explores the specifics of these, reveals some of the challenges we faced and touches upon the ways in which this design evolved. Figure 1. Recruitment and participation overview.

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Recruitment Strategy Advertisements Paid online and print advertisements were at the heart of how we sought to engage the clients of MSWs. Through advertisements like the example in Figure 2, individuals were provided a brief overview of the study and were directed to the study website. Figure 2. Example study advertisement posted online.

The overall approach to advertising was divided into smaller staggered campaigns, which served two important purposes. First, it allowed for recruitment success to be evaluated for each campaign, which was a vital part in determining the advertisement strategy moving forward. Second, it helped control the potential flow of participants, which enabled sufficient testing of the website and phone systems. Advertisements appeared first in two free lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and intersex (LGBTQI) Australian print magazines, and because of their local reach, those advertisements included a direct toll-free phone number. A week's worth of advertising generated 20 telephone calls, which resulted in two interviews. The second advertisements were placed online through a consortium of websites used by MSWs to advertise their services. A month of advertising saw the receipt of only five calls, none of which resulted in an interview. Page 10 of 23




The response to advertisements was tepid at best, and the cost of this strategy outweighed the results. Some specific issues may have hampered this approach. First, the online advertisements were worked to the website size requirements, which left them very small and likely reduced their impact. Second, more work should have been done to assess the traffic and reach of the websites as it is not clear whether they generated the number of visits necessary to attract attention to the project. Although there were additional and more diverse advertising campaigns planned, the poor showing early on forced us to revisit the recruitment strategy.

Website Advertisements were designed to, primarily, direct potential participants to the study website: http://talkaboutmalesexwork.com. The website served as a platform for information on the project and allowed interested individuals to complete two basic prescreen questions (see Figure 3). Those meeting the base requirements were provided a local toll-free number, which would connect them to the study's phone system. Figure 3. Dedicated study website: http://talkaboutmalesexwork.com

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Phone System The advertisements and the website both worked to provide eligible individuals with a connection to the project's phone system, through which an anonymous interview could be conducted. All calls led to a central phone system hosted and maintained in Australia, which is where the four project interviewers were based. If a participant were to place a call, the phone system would route the call to each interviewer's dedicated line, meaning that all four phones would ring at the same time. If one interviewer answered the call, the remaining three phones would stop ringing. Unavailable interviewers turned their phones off, which left the remaining available lines to ring, and if no interviewers were available, potential participants heard a recorded apology message. Prior to being routed to individual interview lines, however, every call was also put through an automated recording service. This service generated digital audio recordings of the entire call for transcription purposes. In keeping with ethical and consent considerations, all participants were made aware that they were being recorded immediately at the start of the call, and all transcripts were cleaned of potentially identifying details. Figure 4 overviews the phone system. Figure 4. Phone system overview.

The project's phone system was designed to operate on a 24-h basis. Unfortunately, the unpredictability of participant phone calls coupled with competing demands on the time of interviewers challenged such wide availability. Furthermore, although interviewers were aware that they may be called upon to conduct interviews throughout the day and night, the reality of attempting to conduct a complex and in-depth conversation – Page 12 of 23




often with very little notice – came to be one of the greater challenges faced by this system of phone interviews. Trying to engage a participant who has called at 2 a.m. or conducting an interview amid the noise and bustle of a city train are examples that point to tensions between protocol and practice. Such hurdles to answering a call or conducting an interview may explain why many calls to the system went unanswered, which resulted in lost advertising efforts.

Adapting the Recruitment and Participation Systems Each piece of the broader strategy described here was adapted to meet the unexpected challenges of engaging an elusive population. First, a new recruitment system that proposed the use of payment incentives with MSWs to encourage them to share the study with their clients was developed. Using profiles posted online, a list of 31 potential MSW informants was developed. With an aim that each informant would hopefully recruit between one and three clients each (at AUD$100 incentive per client), an estimated potential sample size of between 31 and 93 could be achieved at a fraction of the cost associated with advertisements. Through the distribution of postcards containing the study website by MSWs to their clients, it was, again, hoped that potential participants would visit the study website. Second, the website itself was redesigned to include information for MSWs about their role in recruitment, including specifics around the distribution of incentives. It also included an expanded pre-screen questionnaire to capture more relevant but still unidentifiable client data. Finally, a new procedure for organising phone interviews was developed, which utilised the website as a means to schedule specific times and, in doing so, to better capitalise on recruitment efforts.

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Lessons Learned from the Recruitment Process The challenges of reaching a population that is notoriously hard to reach highlight important lessons learned through our recruitment efforts: •

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advertising may be an effective channel for recruitment, but given the associated expenses, due diligence must consider the potential audience and reach. elusive populations may respond better to direct approaches that reach out to them through social channels, as opposed to the arms-length style of advertisements. study websites need to engage potential participants and offer some form of interactive feature, such as a pre-screen questionnaire. expecting research interviewers to be available and ready at all hours is challenged by the realities of a working life and may produce substandard interview quality resulting from a lack of preparedness.

Data Collection Using In-Depth Interviews By now, it should be obvious that this is a research area with limited knowledge. Most previous studies have been quantitative in nature and mostly focussed on finding out who are the male clients of MSWs. Yet, there is now an urgent need to understand the meanings, justifications and assumptions behind how men explain seeking pleasure and gratification via male commercial sexual relations as this will help develop a more realistic and grounded understanding for male sexualities, gender and masculine identity. For this reason, we used a qualitative methodology informed by an interpretative paradigm in which individuals can be active agents in the construction of their social world and be able to negotiate a fit between their individual experiences and Page 14 of 23




the social norms within which they operate. We decided to use in-depth interviews and allow clients to describe their personal experiences in conversations, so as to collect and reproduce their social reality with respect to the aims of our study. In this section, we reproduce aspects of an interview carried out with a MSW client and highlight some of our interviewing protocol. While we had an interview guide, which contained a range of topics we thought would be relevant to explore, we put into operation with each interview a recursive model of interviewing as described by Victor Minichiello, Rosalie Aroni and Terrence Hays. Recursive questioning relies on the process of conversational interaction itself, that is, the relationship between a current remark and the next one. It enables you to do two things: to follow a more conversational model of interviewing and, by doing this, to treat each informant as unique. The listening and analytical thinking skills of the interviewer are of critical importance. If you are fully prepared and informed on the topic, then you may be more capable of hearing and appreciating the implications of the comments from the informant, and making mental links between your questions, the answers and the flowing line of inquiry. Recursive questioning requires a high level of concentration on the part of the interviewer. When you use this strategy, you tend to integrate the informant's statements and comments into organised patterns or trends of thinking which help arrange the pieces of information into a total picture. You interpret and analyse the information as it is given. The use of the critical inner dialogue is part of this overall process. We started the interview with a funnelling question: that is, asking a general and broad natured question, as demonstrated in the interview extracts. These initial questions are designed simply to start the informant thinking about the issues in general terms. Then, as the informant engages in conversation, the interviewer guides the informant's view towards more specific issues by using questions which narrow the area. Finally, the interviewer begins to ask specific questions directly about the issues being examined. That is, answers initially provided by the informants to the general questions are followed up with probes. Probes allow the interviewer to delve deeper on the issues raised by the informant and is a method of clarifying and questioning the meaning

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given by informants to issues and, sometimes, emerging concepts that evolve from the conversation, such as the example of ‘whore sex’ described later in this study. The informant we discuss in the following extracts shares some common demographic characteristics with other clients described in the literature and in our study. At the time of our interview, he was in his late 40s and a highly successful businessman. He travelled a lot around the world and enjoys a lifestyle of affluence. He was formerly married and has two children. We started the interview with a funnelling question asking him to ‘tell us how important sex is to you’. He replied with an extensive answer, of which only part is reproduced here: Very important. It defines who I am. I think about it a lot, it is what makes me content and it makes me feel, through sex, I have discovered who I am. I discovered a side of my personality that I did not know existed. And I discovered that I love to be, being dominated sexually by another man. For a long time I was in relationships with women and had what I would call traditional sex, but somehow with time this stopped working for me. I started to have fantasies about sex with men. Probes were then used to delve more deeply into some of the issues and concepts he raised in his reply to our initial question. During the interview, we honed in on the concept of ‘whore sex’ arising from his description of ‘liking this kind of sex’ that resonated with his sexual self. Here is the dialogue around this concept: •

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Informant: When I watch straight porn I look at the girls who are whores and just love what they are doing and it got me thinking about sex from a different perspective, from the perspective of whores and I like that. Interviewer: Can you explain to me what you mean about a different perspective of sex? (An example of a probe-seeking clarification) Informant: I don't know it just presses all the right buttons from me. I don't think it is easy to be a whore in our society and through watching porn and being with male escorts, who really know how to interact with someone who enjoys whore sex, it has allowed me to explore my sexuality, better understand what I like sexually and to redefine what can be included as part of the sex menu for a male. This is not easy to discover because we have

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prescribed sex behaviours for men, particularly the straight guy. I really like being sexually true to myself, in my skin so to speak. Interviewer: What do you mean? (another example of a probe-seeking clarification) Informant: Strange it is ok for guys to love pussy but use the same language about cocks and the reaction is very different. I think this is changing as we acknowledge more diverse sexual experiences and not only from the pleasure of the straight man. It is liberating! (The informant continues to expand on why this is liberating for him and how it is related to his sexual identity.)

What is interesting here, from an analysis point of view, is that some people over time come to understand what different kinds of sexual expressions mean to them and how they reconcile previous notions of male sexuality. Even more relevant we learnt that a person's sexuality can change over time and how a repositioning of what they validate as sexually rewarding may require a new vocabulary and sex menu, and experimenting with new experiences, sexual images and partners. Through changing sexualities, we can see transformative changes occurring in people's lives.

The Virtual World It became obvious during the course of our fieldwork that we were going to find it difficult to recruit our client sample. However, as part of conducting a review of the literature for this study, we came across several websites that allow clients to provide a review about their experiences with male escorts. Two prominent review sites are http:// www.rentboyreviews.com and http://www.daddyreviews.com/cruise. Of these, Daddy's Men for Men Reviews was of interest to our study and emerged as another source of data from clients. This site offers clients the opportunity to post comprehensive comments about their experiences with escorts, one of our research objectives. The information provided includes two components: one is a survey clients complete about the escorts such as their physical features, payment rates, the sexual activities provided by the escort and other relevant demographic information about the escort. Of greater interest to us, the site allows clients the opportunity to tell their story via a narrative about the escorts, their experiences and information about themselves. This secondary Page 17 of 23




source of information provided us with rich data about clients and what happened during their encounter with the escorts. There are obvious advantages of using online forums such as the one we used in our study. It is less expensive and time-consuming than interviewing people in live faceto-face situations. The interviews for our study required a grant of over AUD$230,000. But, as Robert Kozinets (2010) notes, the disadvantage of using data readily available on the Internet is that the researcher may not fully understand the subculture and assumptions of the online users, thus leading to possible misinterpretation of the limited information allowed to be accepted by the webmaster or moderator. And without stating the obvious, people present in the online context may be different to groups outside the online community sample. Using such secondary data does require matching the fit of the research question with the data that have been made available to the public. We scanned the data to match the data with our research objectives. This included designing a system to organise and code the data. The site includes data from around the world, and the database is huge. Consistent with our study, we decided to limit the analysis to an international setting of three countries: Australia (where the study was funded), the United Kingdom and the United States. However, the dataset for the United States was too huge, and we restricted it to the state of California. The analysis in the end included a total of 799 client reviews consisting of 36, 150 and 613 reviews, respectively, from Australia, the United Kingdom and California. Reviews were sampled over 4 weeks during July/August 2013 and any post was included, so long as it was recent (i.e. posted no earlier than 2010). The data were entered into a spreadsheet and included a number of quantitative variables, some of which were obtained from the website survey and some of which were text information coded into agreed categories. For example, we coded the client's narrative for the following categories: whether the body of the escort was described, whether details of the sex were included, whether the client specifically mentioned the size of the penis, whether the client described the personality of the escort, whether the client mentioned condoms or safe sex and whether the client used the term boyfriend experience to describe their encounter. A yes/no code was used. We also coded the text for how clients self-described. The results of this analysis appear in a book chapter on this subject but, briefly, we organised the observed client profile under four thematic Page 18 of 23




headings, with each thematic heading including a more detailed set of descriptors as shown in Figure 5. We also copied and pasted all of the client's narrative into a Microsoft Word document and currently are conducting an analysis to describe, for example, how clients generally view their experiences, what clients have to say about the bodies and personalities of escorts, how they discuss the size of the penis and what importance they attach to it. Figure 5. MSW client profile descriptors, thematically organised.

An issue that always is associated with the coding of secondary data, such as described in this case study, is internal reliability of the coding. The usual practice is for two researchers to independently code the data once the coding system has been developed and agreed upon. Then you compare your coding results with another member of your research team also coding the same data, and any discrepancy in the coding values is discussed and resolved through a consensus or the involvement of a third independent coder.

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Lessons Learned from the Data Collection Process There are a few important lessons to highlight when you collect qualitative data on hardto-find population groups. •

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interviewing on such a complex topic requires the researcher to be patient and non-judgemental and importantly allow participants to tell their stories freely and with minimal interruptions from the interviewer. Here, the interviewer needs to consider the full set of interviewing tools suggested in the qualitative research literature. the use of the funnelling question technique to allow the researcher to understand the issues from the participants' perspective is critical to collecting quality and rich data. the advantage of finding readily available data, such as online chat forum, to triangulate and obtain further data when studying groups that are difficult to recruit for research is often necessary. when accessing online Internet data, the researcher needs to find ways to understand the culture (or cyberculture) of the community they are studying so that they have a better context to interpret and make sense of the information shared so publicly with others in the virtual world.

Conclusion You want to design a study on clients of male escorts – easy to imagine but more challenging in the face of the social, ethical and methodological issues. Even just thinking about the subject matter – sex work – conjures up predominantly female images, which is one reason the clients of MSWs have remained invisible for so long. This marginalisation is a likely contributor to the stigma and discomfort of being identified as a client of the male sex industry and another reason why clients are not forthcoming to cultivate as research participants. A major lesson from our work is the need to think creatively about how to access such hard-to-reach populations and to Page 20 of 23




be ready to respond with triangulation of recruitment strategies and data sources. We have shown how in-depth interviews with clients can reveal a powerful new discourse about male-to-male relationships while working to unravel the complexities of gendered and sexual norms. Advanced telecommunications offer new opportunities to reach out to these types of populations and potentially ease the burden of self-identifying by offering greater anonymity and confidentiality to research participants. Furthermore, computer-mediated technologies continue to provide new avenues for reaching people and engaging them in research. Like the structure of the sex industry itself, which continues to change and grow more complex, researchers and their methods must also be prepared to evolve in recognition of the increasingly nuanced and diverse populations that we seek to understand.

Exercises and Discussion Questions •

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1. What sort of webpage design would you have used to recruit clients of male escorts? What words would you have selected to encourage clients to self-identify for the study? 2. What other recruitment strategy do you think you could have used? 3. What is the purpose of probes in interviews? Can you ask a question to a colleague on a topic of interest to you and then use probes as part of the interview? 4. How do you think the recursive method of interviewing is different from more structured forms of interviewing? 5. What do you think would be some of the limitations of doing an analysis from secondary data as we conducted with Daddy's Men for Men Reviews? 6. What other strategies would you have used to offer clients of male escorts greater confidentiality and anonymity to participate in research? 7. Should the same ethical considerations apply to research on human sexuality as they apply to other areas of human experience?

Further Reading Hewson, C. (2003). Internet research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Page 21 of 23




References Belza, M., de la Fuente, M., Vallejo, F., Garcia, M., Lopez, M., Barrio, G., & Bolea, A. (2008). Men who pay for sex in Spain and condom use: Prevalence and correlates in a representative sample of the general population. Sexually Transmitted Infections, 84, 207–211. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/sti.2008.029827http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ sti.2008.029827 Brewer, D., Muth, S., & Potterat, J. (2008). Demographic, biometric and geographic comparison of clients of prostitutes and men in the US general population. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, 11. Retrieved from http://mail.ejhs.org/volume11/ brewer.htm Burr, J., & Reynolds, P. (2010). The wrong paradigm? Social research and the predicates of ethical scrutiny. Research Ethics, 6, 128– 133. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/174701611000600404http:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/174701611000600404 Grov, C., Wolff, M., Smith, M., Kohen, J., & Parsons, J. (2013). Male clients of male escorts: Satisfaction, sexual behavior and demographic characteristics. The Journal of Sex Research. Advance online publication. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.789821. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2013.789821#.UlOqq1Ov8aA Haggerty, K. (2004). Ethics creep: Governing social science research in the name of ethics. Qualitative Sociology, 27, 391–414. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:QUAS.0000049239.15922.a3http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/ B:QUAS.0000049239.15922.a3 Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Kozinets, R. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research. London, England: SAGE.

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Minichiello, V., Aroni, R., & Hays, T. (2008). In-depth interviewing (3rd ed.). Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Pearson. Minichiello, V., Marino, R., Browne, J., Jamieson, M., Peterson, K., Reuter, B., & Robinson, K. (1999). A profile of clients of male sex workers in three Australian cities. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 23, 511–518. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-842X.1999.tb01308.xhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-842X.1999.tb01308.x Pitts, M., Smith, A., Grierson, J., O'Brien, M., & MissonS.. (2004). Who pays for sex and why? An analysis of social and motivational factors associated with male clients of sex workers. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33, 353–358. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/ B:ASEB.0000028888.48796.4fhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:ASEB.0000028888.48796.4f Scott, J., Callander, D., & Minichiello, V. (in press). Understanding the clients of male sex workers. In V. Minichiello, ed. & J. Scott (Eds.), Male sex work and society. New York, NY: Harrington Park Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305014529496

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