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Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is but one type of human trafficking, in which a minor American citizen or resident alien is commercially sexually exploited within United States borders. Because DMST carries negative social and psychological consequences, it is an important phenomenon to understand and ultimately prevent. Unfortunately, it is difficult to assess how often DMST occurs within the United States, because the field is plagued by studies with little methodological rigor. One of the areas of DMST inquiry that has largely been ignored in the literature is vulnerability and risk. The risk factors that are often named in the literature as predictive of DMST include youth runaway or throwaway status, homelessness, involvement with the child welfare system, belonging to a sexual or racial minority group, and a history of child physical or sexual abuse. However, none of these named factors has yet achieved predictive validity in the literature, and the field remains confused about how to position and validate these hypothesized risk factors into a DMST vulnerability measurement tool. The objective of this systematic review, then, is to examine the literature for DMST vulnerability measurement tools. The review will fill a sizable gap in the literature by assessing available publications for an operationalization of youth vulnerability to DMST, and will provide recommendations for next steps required for the development and implementation of a DMST vulnerability measurement tool with predictive validity.
Methods.
This study was conceptualized as a systematic review. The search for relevant publications occurred within numerous databases, including ERIC, Academic Search Complete, Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsychINFO, and Social Work Abstracts. Search terms were established a priori and were applied to full texts within the databases. Each of the 2,246 returned articles was screened by title and abstract, at which point 2,172 were marked as irrelevant. The remaining 73 articles were examined in a full text review with inclusion and exclusion criteria in mind. Following the full text review, only 6 articles remained for data extraction and analysis.
Results.
A full text review yielded the startling result that none of the empirical articles within the sampling frame utilized a validated measurement of DMST vulnerability. The articles, however, provided some insight into the associations between risk factors and DMST victimization.
Conclusions and Implications.
The results of this study should alarm DMST researchers and practitioners, because federal, state, and NGO policies are currently functioning on assessments of risk that have little evidence base and have not been established by a validated vulnerability measurement tool. Future research should focus on the development of a measurement tool with predictive validity so that DMST policies and practices can be based upon known risk factors rather than researcher and policymaker hunches. Such a tool (like the CSE-IT tool, which is currently under evaluation for predictive validity, although it is missing from the research literature) may prove valuable for individual practitioners attempting to assess vulnerability, and for macro practitioners attempting to map communities for risk.