Research Proposal: Factors Contributing To Trafficking Of Women From Low Socioeconomic Status

Research Questions

QUESTION

What are the key factors leading to the trafficking of WOMEN from low socioeconomic status in India?

Trafficking is the most difficult phenomenon faced by India. This issue is driven by cultural, economic and social factors. There is a rise in the trafficking of woman due mainly for sex. Sex trafficking is the purchase of a women as a personal property. The women who are purchased are compelled to engage in sexual activities and benefit the trafficker (Outshoorn, 2005). Some of the common factors that are giving rise to such a vulnerable issue are oppression, lack of education, poverty, lack of human and social rights, less economic opportunities for the low socio-economic people etc. These factors are exerting pressure on the victims which push them to migrate and therefore come into the control of the traffickers. In some states of India, parents sell their children to get rum some amount in return to escape from poverty. Also the cultural or the social practices in some states gives rise to trafficking like devaluation of girls and women makes them excessively weak to trafficking (unodc.org, n.d.).

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This study will focus on the following three research questions:

• How did the women get to be included in human trafficking?
• What are the reasons led them to involve in human trafficking?
• What were their encounters?

The purpose of the study is to identify the key factors among the above discussed factors that are contributing towards trafficking of women from low socioeconomic status in India. Therefore, the study will identify the reasons that have forced the women to get into human trafficking and will also analyze their experiences so that further study can be made about how to assist these women to overcome from the human trafficking issue.

The researcher basically focuses on recognizing the significance and connotation of each and every method that will be used in this research. The researcher mainly emphasizes on understanding the literature review and then based on that the researcher derives the objectives of the research.  Then the researcher mainly focuses on collecting the data and then analyzes and discusses the data. Lastly the research will be concluded by aligning the findings with the objectives of the research.

The researcher decides to focus on deductive research approach which helps the researcher to study various previous studies related to trafficking of women, which will be described in the literature review and then test those theories or concepts by collecting data from the victims of human trafficking. However the findings of the study will differ based on the data analysis. Further the researcher focuses on descriptive research design to support the findings with the described research questions. The data collected will be based on qualitative study. (Bailey, 2008)

Information gathered for this study, is mainly intended to identify the factors that has led the women to become the victim of human trafficking. This is done by understanding the reasons behind their trafficking and also their experiences. Since there are some difficulties in communicating and identifying the victims of human trafficking, the sample size considered for this present is 30-40 participants. To obtain relevant information related to the research topic, the target audiences are the trafficking victims of age 13-25. The present study of trafficking of women mainly emphasizes on snowball sampling. Collection of data began from the most convenient participants located in the North, South, East, and West regions of India and expands by their referrals who are willing to participate in this research. The data will be collected by taking the interview of the participants for about an hour with pre-defined structured questions. These questions are developed based on the literature review and the research questions derived to conduct this study. The questions will revolve around the physical, emotional or mental issues they have faced after or during the trafficking, what has made these women to become the victim of human trafficking.

Research Approach and Design

Interviews that will be taken are expected to be easy and simple that will help the participants to explain their answers. During the interview the research might also skip the questions that the participant is uncomfortable with or might ask some extra information so that will be helpful for the study. During the interview notes will be taken and overall discussions will be recorded. Discussions, notes, and all other documentation will be safely stored with password protection in the computer to secure the privacy of the members. All members were asked to sign a form of consent before partaking to guarantee members were decently informed about that they were utilized to for the research and make sure about the protection of the participants and guarantee close to insignificant danger. To examine the information discovered patterns and likenesses will be observed at and over all topics created to get it how every class identifies with each other.

The participants involved in the present research are the women who have been the victim of human trafficking at some point of time in their life. These participants are from all the four regions of India, North, South, East, West. This is because since the human trafficking victims in India in the year 2013 was about 4566 (stophumantrafficking-mha.nic.in, 2013), and it is not possible to understand the reasons of the trafficking from all 4566. Thus the researcher has decided to collect the information from four different reasons from atleast 30-40participants which would atleast give an idea about the key factors that is contributing towards rise in human trafficking. The data will be collected from the women participants of age 13-25 as they will better understand the purpose of the research and can explain their answers in a better way that will be helpful in successful completion of this research.

All the information collected will be documented well in a word file and also in computer for future study and to make an effective conclusion for the present study.  Since it is not easy to reach to victims and communicate easily with them, the researcher will take help of the NGOs to reach to the victims and understand their experiences. Snowball sampling is the sampling method that is used to identify the target audience easily. In this sampling type, the researcher the initial participant to identify another participant who are the victims of the trafficking. The researcher focuses on this type of sampling because the chain referral methodology permits the scientist to achieve populaces that are hard to specimen when utilizing other testing systems; the procedure is simple, cheap and cost-proficient and also this sampling procedure needs small planning and fewer workforces contrasted with other techniques of sampling (Offredy and Vickers, 2013).

The researcher will partnership with Asia foundation that mainly emphasizes on combating TIP (Trafficking in Persons).This is because this organization has presence in atleast 21 countries in almost every region (Hameed et al., 2010). They have lots of information about human trafficking. The researcher will contact with this organization initially through phone to brief them about the research and the purpose of conducting this research. Then as documentation the researcher will mail all the details of research to the concerned person so as to start the research soon. If in any case the organization denies helping, a proper header letter will be issued from the university so that they can understand this research is conducted with some significant person.

Data Collection Methodology

As soon as the organization agrees to the terms and conditions of the research, the participants will be approached with the help of one their team member who have ideas about human trafficking and also the victim cases. Then while conducting the interview a set of questions will be asked to victim keeping in mind that it does not hurt them and then will be asked for their referral to a different victim.

The limitation of the study lies in the choice of methodology. Due to time constraint the researcher decides to use the non- probability sampling method, snowball sampling. The downside of utilizing this method is that it does not focus on random sample. Participants in this method do not get involved in the trafficking of women research by chance; instead they are recruited by chain process. The conclusion of the study may end up with biased results like the sample may include an over-representation of women with various issues having similar characteristics for example 25-30 out of 40 might say that due to poverty they were involved in the trafficking (Sadler et al., 2010).

Another limitation is that the study revolves around qualitative data. The findings from this data can't be extended out to more extensive populaces with the same level of conviction that quantitative data can. This is on account of the research findings are not tried to find whether they are measurably huge or because of chance (Atieno, 2009).

As the data that will be collected is qualitative in nature, documentation is the analysis process that will be followed by the researcher to make an effective conclusion of this present research. All the conversation with the participants will be jotted down and recorded during the process of interview. Then each interview sessions will be commented by the researcher. The researcher will reconstruct the conversation based on the feelings and observation and will align with the research questions. Thus the researcher will preserve the written documents, tapes, interviews, contacts that are listed while conducting the research. The reason for selecting documentation as the process of analyzing the qualitative data is this process helps the researcher develop and outline the analytic process and also encourages in continuous strategizing and conceptualizing about the overall text (sagepub.com, n.d.).

There are two types of issues that may arise while conducting this research (Halley, n.d.):

• One is issues that may arise due to complexities involved in assessing the well-being of the target audiences or participants like consent, confidentiality, harm and risk.
• Another is the issues that may arise due to the research nature like sample size, methodology, subjectivity.

Thus the researcher will ensure that all the relevant information related to the present research is well-informed to all the participants of the study. The researcher will also identify the risks before conducting the survey that the participants may face while participating in this research process so effective actions can be taken initially.  Since the researcher will emphasize on collecting the data using interview process there is main issue of confidentiality with the sharing of information. The researcher will plan foolproof strategies that will help to store the conversation and the documentation safe. Initials or Pseudonyms will be used wherever necessary to make the identifications easier(Richards and Schwartz, 2002).

Below is the time frame in the form of Gantt chart that the researcher will follow to complete the overall research.

Atieno, O. (2009). An analysis of the strengths and limitation of qualitative and quantitative research paradigms.

Bailey, K. (2008). Methods of social research. 4th ed. New York: Free Press.

Halley, K. (n.d.). Ethical Issues in Qualitative Ethical Issues in Qualitative  Research Resear. 

Hameed, S., Hlatshwayo, S., Tanner, E., Türker, M. and Yang, J. (2010). Dynamics, Current Efforts, and Intervention Opportunities for The Asia Foundation. [online] asiafoundation.org.

Offredy, M. and Vickers, P. (2013). Developing a Healthcare Research Proposal: An Interactive Student Guide. 2nd ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, p.139.

Outshoorn, J. (2005). The political debates on prostitution and trafficking of women. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12(1), pp.141--155.

Richards, H. and Schwartz, L. (2002). Ethics of qualitative research: are there special issues for health services research?. Family Practice, 19(2), pp.135--139.

Sadler, G., Lee, H., Seung-Hwan Lim, R. and Fullerton, J. (2010). Recruiting hard-to-reach United States population sub-groups via adaptations of snowball sampling strategy. Nursing & health sciences, 12(3), pp.369 - 374.

sagepub.com, (n.d.). Qualitative Data Analysis. 

stophumantrafficking-mha.nic.in, (2013). Data on human trafficking in India during 2013. 

unodc.org, (n.d.). Addressing the root causes of trafficking.