Abstract
Full-Service Sex Workers (FSSWs) face heightened risk of acquiring HIV, yet exhibit relatively low adoption of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—an antiviral that substantially reduces HIV acquisition risk. Little work examines barriers and facilitators to PrEP uptake willingness among FSSWs. This study aimed to identify the distinct components of barriers and facilitators to PrEP uptake willingness for FSSWs. Here, we subjected 19 PrEP barriers and facilitators identified in the literature to a principal component analysis (PCA) among a sample of 83 FSSWs. Preliminary statistics supported factorability of data. PCA revealed three distinct components of barriers and facilitators that explained 62.80% of the total variance in survey responses. We labeled these components Behavioral and Social Concerns (α = 0.93), Access and Affordability (α = 0.67), and Biologically Based Health Concerns (α = 0.79). This study shows promise for future clinical and research utility of these factors and provides a basis for future psychometric studies of barriers and facilitators to PrEP uptake willingness among FSSWs.
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Due to the sensitive nature of these data, data are not available for public use.
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All analyses were conducted using point-and-click functions in IBM SPSS. No code is available.
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Funding
This project was supported through 2018 Rosalee G. and Raymond A. Weiss Research and Program Innovation Grant from the American Psychological Foundation. At the time of publication, Stephen Ramos was supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIH) by grant # T32 DA023356.
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SR contributed to conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. HW contributed to writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. LK contributed to writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. SDB contributed to writing—review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.
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Ramos, S.D., Woodward, H., Kannout, L. et al. Dimensional Reduction in Barriers and Facilitators to Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Uptake Willingness for Full-Service Sex Workers. Arch Sex Behav 53, 799–810 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02742-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02742-z