After having a read of the website, I don't believe this research is going to take advantage of or patronise us. OP is using their real name, you can easily look up what they have written in the past and can use all that information to make an informed decision about whether we can trust them or not. I believe we can. Re: compensation, I totally understand why that immediately puts a lot of sex workers off, doesn't bother me too much because I'm so part-time and will probably only be watching Netflix with my friend if I wasn't doing the interview, but as always it's your decision. If we only let sex work-led research happen then I imagine we wouldn't have a lot of the rights we have as we have them to thank for a lot of what leads to less criminalisation. That's.. Kind of the point of research. Most sex workers aren't academics. I intend to be, but even then I probably won't bother researching sex work as my realm is more psychology/sexuality not quite touching on paid sex (but who knows!). As long as you can clearly establish that the researcher is a trusted source, and as long as their research is almost entirely composed of sex worker's voices - as this seems to be - I don't think they have to be sex workers to be legit. A sex worker conducting research would be a pretty shit researcher if they weighed in on the discussion, as to do research you have to be pretty objective and unbiased, so it makes no difference if they're a sex worker or not to the point that they have some better kind of understanding - this understanding CAN be achieved without doing the work if you are heavily featuring our voices in your research. It's not black and white is basically what I'm saying.