TITLE:
Identification of Socio-Demographic, Behavioral Patterns and Their Relationship with HIV Status among Female Sex Workers
AUTHORS:
Venkaiah Kodavalla, Hemalatha Rajkumar, Harikumar Rachakulla, Paleswara Vara Prasad Saride, Srinivasan Kallam, Brahmam Narsimhachari Veera Ginnela
KEYWORDS:
Behavioral Patterns, Community-Based Cross-Sectional Studies, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Factor Analysis, Cluster Analysis, HIV Status
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of AIDS,
Vol.5 No.1,
March
26,
2015
ABSTRACT: The prevalence of HIV in high risk
population is influenced significantly the behavioral and sociodemographic
characteristics. However, considering the complexity of behavior among female
sex workers, the relationship between a particular behavioral pattern and the
HIV status of this “at risk” population assumes significance. Data generated in
a community-based cross-sectional study earlier carried out to assess the
prevalence estimates, at district level, of HIV status in eight districts of
State of Andhra Pradesh, India was used to carry out factor analysis to explore
the role of demographic and behavioral pattern and their relationship with the
HIV status among female sex workers. Data on 3083 female sex workers in the
study revealed that there existed nine patterns among demographic and
behavioral characteristics, which explained 62% of the total variation through
factor analysis. Further, cluster analysis was performed to identify the groups
of individuals having similar characteristics. Two of those clusters had
sizeable numbers having similar characteristics. FSWs belonging to cluster 2
had significantly high risk factors compared with Cluster 1. The overall
prevalence of HIV was 11.4% (10.6% in cluster 1 and 15.9% in cluster 2) among
high risk population. There exists a strong relationship between behavioral
patterns and HIV positive.