Identification of Socio-Demographic, Behavioral Patterns and Their Relationship with HIV Status among Female Sex Workers

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.