Worker Health Chartbook 2004

2000 Minority Farm Operator Childhood Agricultural Injury Survey (M–CAIS)

M–CAIS was conducted for NIOSH by the USDA, National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) through an Interagency Agreement. The survey was defined as a census of the 49,270 minority farm operations identified in the NASS 1997 Census of Agriculture list. A farm was considered to be eligible for M–CAIS regardless of whether youths were on the farm in 2000. This was necessary to allow for meaningful estimates of both injuries and the number of youths on farms for the various youth populations covered in the survey. Because of confidentiality concerns, racial minority farm operators and Hispanic operators were handled independently. This resulted in farms being used to calculate both the racial minority estimate and the Hispanic estimate. In other words, individual operators who reported being a racial minority and of Hispanic ethnicity are represented in both estimates. Because of this overlap, it is not possible to add racial and Hispanic estimates together.

The survey used a CATI survey instrument. The interviews were conducted by 10 NASS calling centers between February and March of 2001. The M–CAIS survey was conducted in these winter months to increase the response rate of the survey. Participation in the survey was strictly voluntary. In addition to the main CATI data collection effort, five NASS State offices conducted personal interviews with a sample of 2,088 minority operators that were not contacted during the CATI survey period. The two main reasons for not contacting these farm operators during this period were their lack of availability (even after repeated contact attempts) and their lack of a working telephone number on file with the NASS. The five States that conducted the personal interviews were Alabama, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. These States were selected because they had the largest number of minority farm operations. The personal interviews were conducted during April and May of 2001 with the same survey instrument used in the CATI process.

The data collected for M–CAIS were self-reported by either the female or male head of household. If an injury occurred to a household youth aged 16 or older, and the youth was available to talk to the NASS enumerator, he or she was asked to answer the injury section of the survey. Information such as youth demographics, the occurrence of an injury, and the characteristics of an injury event were subject to the interpretation of the respondent.

For the survey, a farm was defined as any operation with $1,000 or more of gross agricultural production within a calendar year and included both crop and livestock operations. A youth was defined as any person under age 20. Household youths were defined as all youths who resided on the farm. Hired youths were defined as youths who were hired directly by the farm operator (excluding contract laborers) to work on the farm but were not household members. Visitors were defined as all other youths who were on the farm but were not household members or hired workers. An injury was defined as any condition that resulted in 4 hours or more of restricted activity (e.g., the person could not perform work or other normal duties, missed work, or missed school) or a condition that required professional medical treatment. Although the total number of childhood agricultural injuries was requested for the calendar year 2000, descriptive information was collected only for the four most recent injury events. An agricultural work-related injury was defined as any injury meeting the above definition that occurred while performing work on the farm associated with the farm business, including chores. Non-work injuries were defined as injuries occurring on the farm that were not due to farm work. The survey excluded injuries to contractors working for the farm operation or injuries that occurred to youths off the farm property.

The racial and Hispanic origin classification for the farm operator and all household youths were set to the racial classification provided on the 1997 Census of Agriculture sampling frame. In addition, Asians and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders were combined into a single Asian category for all analyses.

The estimation procedure for the M–CAIS was developed as a two-step process. The first step involved post-stratifying the CATI and personal interview results to account for farm operators who refused to participate in the survey or were inaccessible. For the racial minority data, the results were post-stratified by the four farm operator racial categories (Black, Native American, Asian, and Other) within the nine U.S. geographic regions defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. For the Hispanic data, post-stratification was for the nine geographic regions only.

The second step in the estimation process was benchmarking the post-stratified survey results to the published counts for minority-operated farms released in the 1997 Census of Agriculture. These published counts from the 1997 Census of Agriculture include imputed values for minority farm operations (i.e., some farm operations without racial data for the operator were classified as racial minority operations based on characteristics of the farm operation or other factors). Since these imputed values caused the published minority farm counts to be higher than the sampling frame minority farm counts, the benchmarking process was necessary. Benchmarking was applied by race within the nine geographic regions.

For further information, contact

Surveillance and Field Investigations Branch
Division of Safety Research
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
1095 Willowdale Rd, MS H–1808
Morgantown, WV 26505
Telephone: 304–285–5916

Current Population Survey (CPS)

Multiple-Cause-of-Death Data