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The Attitudes Toward Men Who Pay for Sex Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation

Abstract

Only a few studies have measured attitudes toward men who pay for sex (MWPS), and those that did so usually based their assessment on a limited number of items. This study sets out to devise a measure of attitudes toward MWPS that is founded on a solid theoretical framework and features satisfactory psychometric properties. Based on a conceptualization of the available literature, a tentative model for examining attitudes toward MWPS (the attitudes toward men who pay for sex scale, ARMPS) was constructed, designed to measure the factors that express a perception of (1) paying for sex as a legitimate behavior and (2) paying for sex as a deviant behavior. The participants were 687 Israeli men. The analysis included inter-item correlations, exploratory factor analysis, comparison of two wording versions, the assessment of construct validity, and the assessment of criterion validity and reliability. The findings confirmed the ATMPS scale reliability and construct validity and suggest the benefits of further application in other cultural and linguistic contexts.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Yael Goor, the director of the Levinsky Clinic, for her continuing support of this project.

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Correspondence to Einat Peled.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The Review Board of Tel Aviv University approved the study.

Human and Animal Rights

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Peled, E., Shilo, G., Marton Marom, Y. et al. The Attitudes Toward Men Who Pay for Sex Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation. Arch Sex Behav 49, 3075–3087 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01668-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01668-0

Keywords

  • Men who pay for sex
  • Sex work
  • Prostitution