Vulnerability to Sex Trafficking: Adult Women’s Experiences While They Were Adolescents

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript shows much promise, but some improvements could strengthen the manuscript. I recommend a revise and resubmit.

Introduction

1) Consent is not valid if the person is being paid? So, someone working at McDonalds who is being paid and consents is a trafficking survivor? Seems like something is missing from the sentence.

2) I don’t like the emphasis on NO choice. It creates misconceptions. Survivors can and do make difficult choices, and they can consent to a sex trafficking situation. If someone consents under conditions of force, fraud or coercion, they are trafficked. Sometimes these situations are quite subtle, but the idea of NO agency and NO choice leads to victim blaming mentalities and misidentification of survivors as criminals. Sometimes trafficking is a constrained choice, but it is still a choice and a choice that can overlap with trafficking. See Schwarz, Kennedy and Britton 2017. The authors touch on this in the following paragraphs, but something else is needed surrounding the statement on page 1 line 34.

Methods

1) How did you find/recruit the sample? Chain sampling from what? Where did the initial contacts come from?

2) Were the interviews recorded? Transcribed?

3) What was the data analysis process for the qualitative portion of the project?

4) See qualitative reporting standards from the APA here, to use as a guide

qual-table-1.pdf (apa.org)

Results

Use APA guidelines for formatting qualitative work in the results section. Same guideline doc

qual-table-1.pdf (apa.org)

Some of the data analysis write up for the quantitative portion should go in the methods in a quantitative data analysis section.

Discussion

Expand the implications.

Author Response

We found very useful all the Comments and Suggestions of reviewer 1.

All the corrections are marked in yellow.

We agree with the reviewer's interpretation of consent, and we agree that survivors can and do make difficult choices, and they can consent to a sex trafficking situation. Likewise, we found very useful the reference (Schwarz, Kennedy and Britton 2017)

We explained how we recruited the sample, and the interviews were recorded and transcribed. On the other hand, we followed reporting standards from the APA. Finally, the discussion and conclusion were rewritten.

All the Comments and Suggestions were attended in the corrections marked in yellow on pages: 3-7, 13, 15-17.

Reviewer 2 Report

see attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The are still several typos and incomplete and run-on sentences. The manuscript needs to be edited thoroughly before re-submission. 

Author Response

We found useful the Comments and Suggestions of reviewer 2.

All the corrections are marked in yellow.

We changed the title. We also corrected the introduction. The paper examines what gaps exist in existing literature and how this manuscript aims to fill them.

We also examined the ethics of interviewing, our positionality and how we mitigated and managed risk and trauma.

Data coding, analysis, and interpretation of the data were explained in the Materials and Methods section. Finally, the discussion and conclusion were rewritten.

All the Comments and Suggestions were attended in the corrections marked in yellow on pages: 1-6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15-17.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your attention to the reviewer comments. I do think the narratives could be expanded. As they are, they are formatted as "flash" or one to two sentences. This leaves the trained qualitative researcher to wonder what is missing from the more complete narrative. 

Author Response

We found very useful your suggestions.

We attended your comments on pages 6-10 (marked in yellow).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The theoretical contribution can be improved

Still, there are several sentence structure issues. I highly encourage thorough editing for clarity before publishing 

Author Response

We found very useful your suggestions

We attended to your suggestions on page 3. Pages 6 to 10 were also corrected (corrections were marked in yellow).

On the other hand, the English language was revised by a US-born student.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx