J.A. Miller and D.J.
Murphy
NIOSH Education and Information Division
During
the third year of the Agricultural Health Promotion Systems
project at Penn State University, agricultural safety and
health demonstrations were presented at various sites throughout
Pennsylvania and, in three instances, in New York state. The
demonstrations were presented by both project staff and county
extension personnel. Evaluation feedback forms were developed
to accompany the various demonstrations. This paper discusses
the results of these evaluations for five different safety
demonstrations:
- Tractor
Overturn Hazards;
- PTO
Hazard Simulator;
- First-on-the-Scene
Actions;
- Corn
Picker Hazard Simulator; and,
- Respiratory
Protection Equipment.
Two
criteria guided development of the evaluation feedback forms.
First, they were designed to be as brief as possible, so that
respondents could quickly and efficiently complete them. Second,
they were designed for ease of handling and processing, in
this instance printed front and back on card stock. The evaluation
forms used for the five different demonstrations contained
three groups of items. The first dealt with the respondent's
reactions to the safety demonstration, using Likert-type response categories ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.
The second focused on the respondent's intended use of the
information presented in the demonstration. The third asked
about the respondent's gender and relation to the occupation
of farming. The forms were nearly identical, differing only
in alterations of wording mentioning the particular device
or safety concern of each demonstration.
The
appropriate forms were distributed to those attending each
demonstration with the request that they be completed and
returned at the close of the event. Demonstrations presented
at 21 sites produced a total of 400 completed evaluation forms.
Not surprisingly, the great majority of respondents were male
(85%), and just over three-fifths (62%) were either full-
or part-time farmers, or spouses or children of farmers.
Overall,
respondents reacted favorably to the safety and health demonstrations.
Over 90% strongly agreed or agreed that the demonstrations
had increased their understanding of farm safety hazards,
and 89% responded similarly when asked whether the demonstration
had taught them new information about farm safety. Other results
are detailed in the paper.
The
paper concludes with a discussion of the formative and summative
functions that such feedback data can play in assessing agricultural
safety and health demonstrations.
Disclaimer
and Reproduction Information: Information in NASD does not represent
NIOSH policy. Information included in NASD appears by permission
of the author and/or copyright holder. More
NASD Review: 04/2002
This
research abstract was extracted from a portion of the proceedings
of "Agricultural Safety and Health: Detection, Prevention and
Intervention," a conference presented by the Ohio State University
and the Ohio Department of Health, sponsored by the Centers
for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health.
The
authors noted above are from: J.A. Miller and D.J. Murphy,
Penn. State University, University Park, PA.
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