Former CRRC-Armenia Fellow Publishes Groundbreaking Study on Armenian Female Sex Workers

Former CRRC-Armenia Fellow Publishes Groundbreaking Study on Armenian Female Sex Workers

Date: October 6, 2014
CRRC–Armenia is very happy to announce that one of its senior fellows, Karine Markosyan, recently published her article titled “Correlates of Inconsistent Refusal of Unprotected Sex among Armenian Female Sex Workers” in Volume 2014 of the AIDS Research and Treatment academic journal. Ms. Markosyan’s research at CRRC-Armenia in 2012 also explored refusal of unprotected sex by Armenian female sex workers (FSWs). The data she used for her research at CRRC-Armenia was from a study done in 2010 that interviewed 120 sex workers over the age of 18. 

For the study published in AIDS Research and Treatment, 118 female sex workers in Yerevan, aged 20–52, completed a questionnaire that assessed their demographic, psychosocial, and behavioral characteristics, in order to analyze the differences between those that consistently and those that inconsistently refused unprotected sex (52.5% of the sample).

As stated in the discussion part of the paper: “Findings of the current study suggest that FSWs, who inconsistently refuse unprotected sex, can be characterized as those who have experienced more types of abuse, have more impediments to condom use, and charge lower fees for service.” 

We congratulate Ms. Markosyan, as well as CRRC-Armenia, for the support it provided to Ms. Markosyan to conduct this very important research, one of the first studies of its kind investigating important HIV-risk behavior.

Full article is available here. 

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