“How should we operationalize the concept ‘sex worker who is actively being sex trafficked’ for the purpose of determining how many such people there are, taking care that our operationalization successfully captures our moral intuitions related to this subject” is certainly an interesting question, and your answer is not prima facie unreasonable (although we would surely want to consider it carefully and with a critical eye, before applying it).
But I want to note that it is an almost wholly irrelevant question unless we intend to do our own data collection from scratch. For the purpose of determining the answer to our question by looking at existing data, what use is an operationalization like this if the data we would need to answer that operationalized question is not in our data sets?
In other words—it’s not like the existing studies that Aella cites involved the subjects being asked the question you propose, or anything like it. Or maybe some of them did! But we don’t know, because in many cases the data is from sources like this:
They cite a 2006 GAO report which says depressing things like “the U.S. government’s estimate was developed by one person who did not document all his work” and “There is also a considerable discrepancy between the numbers of observed and estimated victims of human trafficking”
Maybe define them to be people who do not want to be a sex worker, even if they take into account the fact they might have no money otherwise.
“How should we operationalize the concept ‘sex worker who is actively being sex trafficked’ for the purpose of determining how many such people there are, taking care that our operationalization successfully captures our moral intuitions related to this subject” is certainly an interesting question, and your answer is not prima facie unreasonable (although we would surely want to consider it carefully and with a critical eye, before applying it).
But I want to note that it is an almost wholly irrelevant question unless we intend to do our own data collection from scratch. For the purpose of determining the answer to our question by looking at existing data, what use is an operationalization like this if the data we would need to answer that operationalized question is not in our data sets?
In other words—it’s not like the existing studies that Aella cites involved the subjects being asked the question you propose, or anything like it. Or maybe some of them did! But we don’t know, because in many cases the data is from sources like this:
… probably not, though.
Admittedly this is not my expertise, I don’t know how it works, all I know is that it’s considered a real problem that affects a lot of people.
Don’t take my definition too seriously, I think I omitted the part where they’re trafficked far from their homes.