Here’s a random sample of Backpage.com’s Adult section taken between October 31st 2011 and November 7th 2011. Here are a few questions you can use it to answer:
- Are some states more likely to have ads with code words for minor sex trafficking victims? (No, it’s pretty evenly distributed)
- What weights do posters report, and how common are those weights among women who are 18+ years old?
- What proportion of ads for sex are written in the first person? (About 1 in 5 in this cross-section–see below:)
Here’s the poster, using my research on Craigslist a year and a half ago. Though the approaches to the above dataset and the below research topic can be similar, our Backpage work is in its early stages:
3 Comments