Table 2.

Summary of participant recommendations.

Construct	Item & Response Option Recommendations
Types/Acts	Introduce items with normalizing statements, e.g., “Sometimes people do things for money or financial compensation because they want to, need to, or for other reasons.” Specify virtual and in-person items. Follow initial items with language like “for the rest of the survey, we refer to the items above as providing sexual contact, content, or services for compensation.” Avoid language like “trading sex” for financial compensation. Separate sexual contact and intercourse. Include personal items like bath water, socks, and underwear.
Compensations	Separate money, drugs/alcohol, food, and other response options. Specify payments directly to a bill (e.g., rent, tuition). Include tokens for online gaming subpopulations. Include Amazon Wishlist items, gift cards, Cashapp or Venmo.
Method	To encourage responding about platforms for meeting people, include a statement indicating that “the goal is to better understand participants’ experiences. We will not publish specific names of sites.”
Time Spent	Include two items for all sex trades to identify the time spent “preparing” and “providing.” Another item to identify “editing” for virtual forms. Provide examples for each item. For example, preparing can include: “personal grooming like makeup as well as setting up the space.”
Consequences	Introduce items with normalizing statements, e.g., “People have many different experiences because of providing sexual content, contact, or services compensation. Some can be positive, negative, both or neither.” Include many diverse options that could be perceived as positive or negative. Group thematically rather than by perceived level of positivity, e.g., physical, emotional, financial, relational. Add violence. This is the only sub-theme that may have exclusively negative items.
Circumstances	Introduce items with a normalizing statement, e.g., “sometimes people do so because they need to, want to, or for other reasons.” Include items that examine economic needs (e.g., spending money, avoid or pay off debts) and wants (e.g., spending money), empowerment (e.g., seek pleasure), and exploitation (e.g., pressured or asked in a way that I couldn’t say no, forced to).
Harm reduction	Use Likert scale items. Include a mix of positive and negative strategies.
Identity or labeling of experiences	Ask the participant whether they consider any of sex trading acts to use a check all that apply format to allow for multiple experiences. Response options may include sugaring, sex trading, sex work, sex trafficking, hobby, employment, sexual favors, something I do.