Commercial sexual behavior among migrants in Shenzhen city

Objective To examine the situation of commercial sexual behavior and its influential factors among migrants in Shenzhen city for providing evidence for effective intervention.Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted and 1 014 migrants were recruited with multistage sampling from Yantian,Luohu,Futian districts of Shenzhen from October 2006 to March 2007.Information was collected with a face-to-face questionnaire survey by trained interviewers.Results The proportion of subjects who had trading sex was 4.65%(38/817).There were 7.94%(27/340) of male subjects having commercial sexual behavior and 2.31%(11/477) of female having commercial sexual behavior.Multiple logistic regressions showed that gender,sex partner at debut were the possible influential factors for commercial sex.Compared with male,female had lower commercial sex(odds ratioOR=0.28,95% confidence intervalCI:0.13,0.63).The subjects with a non-spouse sex partner at debut had slightly frequent commercial sexual action(OR=2.26,95% CI:0.91,5.65),but the difference was not statistically significant(Wald χ²=2.96,P=0.081).Conclusion Male migrants have a higher occurrence of commercial sex compared with female migrants,whereas those who had a non-spouse sex partners at debut also had a higher commercial sexual behavior.More emphasis should be implemented on the advocacy for safe sex to reduce commercial sexual behavior,especially among male migrants.