Estimating the Prevalence of Human Trafficking in the United States: Considerations and Complexities Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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3 Domestic Approaches to Measuring Prevalence
3 Domestic Approaches to Measuring Prevalence
Pages 17-24
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From page 17... ...
Hightower noted that human trafficking is a public health issue that affects individuals, families, and communities and that research and data collection are critical to strengthening the nation's response. In collaboration with HHS's Office on Women's Health, OTIP is implementing the Human Trafficking Data Collection Project to establish uniform data collection standards across anti-trafficking grant programs and to integrate data on human trafficking into existing datasets for child welfare, runaway and homeless youth, refugee resettlement, and health care service systems.
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From page 18... ...
; Amy Leffler of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) , who is the lead researcher on NIJ's trafficking in persons research portfolio and cochair of the Research and Data Committee of the interagency Senior Policy Operating Group; and Meredith Dank of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a research professor who has served as a principal investigator on more than a dozen human trafficking studies funded by the U.S.
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From page 19... ...
She said NIJ's recent research aims to better figure out prevalence through examining specific populations in specific jurisdictions while using innovative statistical methods, such as multiple systems estimation and respondent-driven sampling, to see how lessons learned abroad and in other fields can be applied to the United States. Leffler reminded participants that prevalence is just one piece of a very complex puzzle.
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From page 20... ...
She also used multiple systems estimation to conduct a study on trafficking prevalence in the United States; however, in the absence of a centralized referral database she had to rely on data collected by various service providers and law enforcement agencies, which she said was not always a fruitful endeavor. Dank also described an exploratory study funded by NIJ that looked at labor trafficking of U.S.
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From page 21... ...
s Leffler noted NIJ's continued effort to support evaluation studies of victim service providers to determine what provisions are most effective. She also emphasized the importance of applying a more survivor-informed definition of program success to the evaluations, and she suggested bringing in stakeholders from different disciplines in academia, as well as law enforcement and victims services, to work together in determining what methodological approaches work for each population.
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From page 22... ...
Dank responded that the lack of a concise definition and variations in state laws make it difficult to address child labor in the United States as its own research problem. Leffler shared an instance in NIJ where learning about child labor trafficking was an unintended result of a study about sex trafficking; the finding caused them to consider how they might direct future resources.
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From page 23... ...
Once child victims matriculate to criminal adult activity, are they captured in the data? Dank said that definitional issues, as well as a lack of apparent coercion or fraud in what appears to be willful sex work, make it difficult to address nuances like this in a prevalence study.
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