Dr. Matthew V. Pruitt - Associate Professor of Sociology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PhD, North Carolina State University
Research interests: Deviant Behavior, Sexuality and Society.
E-mail: matt.pruitt@wku.edu
Office: 127 Grise Hall
Phone: (270) 745-2376
Website: www.wku.edu/~matt.pruitt

During summer 2006, Dan Myers (economics) and I took students on a study abroad program to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We are currently recruiting students for a return visit in Summer 2008.

My most recent research has involved the study of male Internet
escorts. My exploratory, descriptive analysis of male-for-male escorts, “Online Boys: Male-for-male Internet Escorts,” was published in Sociological Focus (2005) 38(3):189-203. My paper, “Deviant Research: Deception, Male Internet Escorts, and Response Rates,” appears in Deviant Behavior (2008) 29(1):70-82. This paper directly tests for a differential in response rates to data gathered from an e-mail request for information on male-for-male escort fees sent by a sociologist with data gathered from an e-mail that appeared to be from a potential client asking for rates, finding response rate of 15% and 60%, respectively.

I am currently involved in three research projects. Amy Krull and I are working on two papers. One paper analyzes female Internet escort advertisements as a novel way to make a contribution to the scant literature that has addressed the issue of why men visit prostitutes. Our other paper compares the way women market themselves to men in personal ads with the way in which female sex workers market themselves to men in Internet escort advertisements. In addition, Dan Myers and I are analyzing nightly and hour fees charged by male-for-male Internet escorts.