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Work Safety Culture of Youth Farmworkers in North Carolina: A Pilot Study Thomas A. Arcury, PhD, Gregory D. Kearney, DrPH, Guadalupe Rodriguez, MS, Justin T. Arcury, MS, and Sara A. Quandt, PhD
Youths employed as agricultural workers in the United States experience high rates of injury and mortality.1---4 Many youths are employed in agricultural work on their family’s farm, but many other youths are hired farmworkers working on commercial farms. Current regulations allow youths as young as 14 years to be employed as hired farmworkers without parental permission; youths aged 10 to 13 years can be employed as hired farmworkers with parental permission.5---7 Youths employed in agriculture can work with sharp tools, machinery, and pesticides, as well as do the strenuous tasks of planting, cultivating and harvesting crops, and working with large animals. Most hired youth farmworkers in the United States are Latino, and often they are either immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries or the US-born children of immigrant farmworker parents.8,9 An unknown number of youth farmworkers are unaccompanied minors who migrate for agricultural employment but are not accompanied by a parent.10,11 Hired youth farmworkers share the same vulnerabilities as adult farmworkers, including low wages, few or no benefits, few regulatory protections, hazardous work, discrimination, and limited access to health care.12---14 Youth farmworkers are especially vulnerable to occupational injuries because of their smaller size, lesser strength, and greater surface-to-volume ratio compared with adults; their developing neurological and reproductive systems; and their lack of maturity and experience. Few studies have addressed factors affecting the occupational health and safety of youths working on farms, with fewer studies focused on hired youth farmworkers. Work safety culture is an important aspect of workplace safety.15 On the basis of Bandura’s theory of reciprocal determinism,16,17 Cooper15 argued that safety culture includes behavioral, situational, and psychological elements, thereby encompassing many different aspects of the work environment. Behavioral elements
Objectives. We analyzed aspects of the behavioral, situational, and psychological elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina. Methods. Data were from interviewer-administered questionnaires completed with 87 male and female hired farmworkers aged 10 to 17 years in North Carolina in 2013. We computed means, SDs, and Cronbach a values for the perceived work safety climate and safety perception summary scores. Results. Hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina described a negative work safety culture. Most engaged in unsafe general and unsafe work behaviors, few received training, and many were sexually harassed at work. They had mixed safety attitudes and knew that their employment was precarious. They reported a poor perceived work safety climate characterized by the perception that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.” However, we could not detect statistically significant associations between work safety culture and injuries among these farmworkers. Conclusions. Increased scrutiny of agriculture as a suitable industry for workers as young as 10 years and additional regulations to protect hired youth farmworkers, if not to remove them from this environment, are warranted. Additional research is needed. (Am J Public Health. 2015;105:344–350. doi:10. 2105/AJPH.2014.302254)
include observable safety and risk behaviors. Situational elements include safety management programs and actions. Psychological elements include subjective assessments of safety. For example, work safety climate, a worker’s perceptions of how an employer values safety over production,18,19 has been related to adverse health outcomes, including musculoskeletal discomfort and working while injured or ill, among adult farmworkers.20 Westaby and Lee21 applied the work safety culture model in a longitudinal analysis of injuries among Future Farmers of America members. They found that a behavioral measure, dangerous risk taking, was positively associated with injuries; that a psychological measure, safety consciousness, was inversely related to injuries; but that a situational measure, safety knowledge, had a positive rather than a negative association with injuries. They suggested that this last, counterintuitive result may be explained by workers being placed in more dangerous environments for which they are provided greater safety information.
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Only a few elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers have been addressed in the literature. For example, among the behavioral elements, general risk behavior (e.g., not wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle) and work risk behavior (e.g., working with power tools, working with toxic substances) are positively associated with the incidence of injuries among youths working on farms.22---24 Shipp et al.25 reported that few (19%) adolescent farmworkers in Texas received pesticide safety training, a situational element. Parental attitude toward safety is another situational element that has been examined for youths working on farms.26 Having a risky attitude, a psychological element, is associated with the incidence of injuries among youths working on farms.22---24 Greater effort is needed to document work safety culture of all youths working on farms; this effort is particularly important for hired youth farmworkers because they are more vulnerable than youths working on family farms. In our analysis, we used data from a pilot study to describe aspects of the behavioral,
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situational, and psychological elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina.
METHODS Data for this analysis were from a pilot study conducted in North Carolina in 2013. The project was a collaboration of Wake Forest School of Medicine, East Carolina University, and the Farmworker Advocacy Network. All participants gave signed informed assent; when available, participants’ parents gave signed consent for their children to participate. The institutional review board approved a waiver to allow interviews with participants who did not have a parent or legal guardian present.
Participants Participants included male and female youths aged 10 to 17 years who were currently employed doing farmwork. No sampling frame for hired youth farmworkers exists. The investigators worked with organizations that provide services to farmworkers to identify potential participants. These included North Carolina FIELD (Focus on Increasing Education, Leadership, and Dignity) Coalition; Student Action With Farmworkers; North Carolina Justice Center; Columbus County Community Health, Inc.; Greene County Health Care, Inc.; North Carolina Farmworkers Project; and Migrant Education Program, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. These organizations introduced interviewers to individual farmworker families that included youth workers or to farmworker camps in which youth farmworkers were thought to live. Participants were recruited from April through November 2013. This period allowed recruitment of participants working in the diversity of crops for which youth farmworkers are employed. The recruitment process did not provide information on the total number of youth farmworkers who were asked to participate but rather who declined. Without this denominator, a participation rate could not be calculated.
Data Collection Data were collected with an intervieweradministered questionnaire. The questionnaire included items taken from an existing questionnaire22 and scales, with additional items for
the situational elements of training and harassment developed by the investigators. The questionnaire included items eliciting information on participant personal characteristics; occupational injuries; and behavioral, situational, and psychological elements of safety culture. The English questionnaire was translated to Spanish by native Spanish speakers familiar with the vernacular Spanish used by immigrant farmworkers in North Carolina. The questionnaire was pretested with young adults (aged 18 and 21 years) who had worked as youth farmworkers and revised as needed. Interviewers were bilingual native Spanish speakers familiar with agricultural workers. If a potential participant was living with a parent, then the interviewer explained the project to a parent and obtained signed consent. The interviewer explained the project to the participant, answered any questions, obtained signed assent, and conducted the interview. For unaccompanied minors, only assent was obtained. Interviews took approximately 45 minutes to complete. Participants were given a $20 incentive for completing the interview.
Measures Personal characteristics collected included gender, age (in the categories 10---13, 14---15, 16---17 years), country of birth, Hispanic ethnicity, and languages spoken. Other personal characteristics collected included whether the participant was currently attending school, years of school completed (in the categories 3---5, 6---8, and 9---12 years), and state of residence. Participants indicated if they lived with both parents, mother only, father only, other older relatives, or alone. Measures of musculoskeletal injuries in the last 12 months included specific injuries of the shoulder, wrist, knee, or ankle, as well as any musculoskeletal injury (having pain in any 1 or more of the specific musculoskeletal sites). Measures of trauma in the last 12 months included experiencing a cut, burn, or eye injury, as well as any trauma (having any 1 or more of the specific traumas). Measures of dermatological injuries in the last 12 months included having sunburn or rash and any dermatological injury (having had 1 or both of the specific dermatological injuries). Behavioral elements of work safety culture included 4 general safety behaviors and 3
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work safety behaviors.24 Participants agreed or disagreed with statements about never riding in uncovered trucks, always using seatbelts, always wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle, and always wearing a helmet when riding an all-terrain vehicle in the last 12 months (general risk behaviors); and always wearing safety goggles when doing farmwork tasks, always using hearing protection when working around noisy machinery, and wearing a respirator when working around toxic substances or dust in the last 12 months (work safety behaviors). Situational elements included training and harassment. Participants agreed or disagreed with statements about receiving training about pesticides, tool use, and machinery in the last 12 months and ever. Harassment measures were based on agreement with whether the participant experienced each of 5 behaviors in the last 12 months when doing farmwork: having been stared at inappropriately at a sensitive part of the body; having had a sexual remark made about him or her; having been brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way; having been offered benefits in return for a sexual favor; and having been forced to have intimate physical contact. Psychological elements included 3 measures. The safety attitude risk index developed by McCurdy and Kwan24 was used. It included 4 items that asked participants to agree or disagree with 2 unsafe attitudes and 2 safe attitudes, in which the unsafe attitude was coded “1” and the safe attitude was coded “0.” McCurdy and Kwan summed the responses for a total score. The Cronbach a was 0.40, making the reliability of the scale highly questionable. Therefore, results for the individual items are reported, but the sum score is not. Precarious employment was based on a 5-item scale developed by Vives et al.27,28 with which the participants agreed (1) or disagreed (0). The perceived work safety climate scale of Gillen et al.29 was used. This scale has been used in previous research with adult farmworkers.20 The scale includes 9 items with which participants agreed (1) or disagreed (0), and 1 item had 3 response categories. This final item did not scale with the first 9 items and was excluded from the total score (but was reported separately). The Cronbach a was 0.79. Higher
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TABLE 1—Personal Characteristics of Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Characteristics
No. (%)
Sex Male
54 (62.1)
Female
33 (37.9)
Age, y 10–13
23 (26.4)
14–15 16–17
34 (39.1) 30 (34.5)
scores indicated better perceived work safety climate.
Analysis We computed frequency counts and percentages for all of the measures. We computed means, SDs, and Cronbach a values for the perceived work safety climate summary score and safety perception summary score. All analyses were conducted with SAS 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC).
Country of birth United States
68 (78.2)
Mexico
16 (18.4)
Guatemala
1 (1.1)
Honduras
2 (2.3)
State of residence North Carolina Florida
77 (88.5) 6 (6.9)
Texas
2 (2.3)
Virginia
1 (1.1)
None Latino ethnicity
1 (1.1) 78 (89.7)
Race White
6 (6.9)
Black American Indian or Alaska Native
5 (5.7) 4 (4.6)
Mixed/Mestizo
72 (82.8)
Languages spoken English
68 (78.2)
Spanish
73 (83.9)
Indigenous Currently attending school Years of school completed 3–5
3 (3.4) 65 (74.7) 9 (10.3)
6–8
37 (42.5)
9–12
41 (47.1)
RESULTS Participants included boys (62.1%) and girls (37.9%) and individuals aged 10 to 13 years (26.4%), 14 to 15 years (39.1%), and 16 to 17 years (34.5%; Table 1). More than three quarters (78.2%) were born in the United States, and 88.5% were residents of North Carolina. Most (89.7%) reported Latino ethnicity, and 82.8% reported mixed or mestizo race. Most spoke English (78.2%) and Spanish (83.9%). About three quarters were still attending school; 10.3% had completed 3 to 5 years of school, 42.5% completed 6 to 8 years of school, and 47.1% completed 9 to 12 years of school. Most (87.3%) lived with one or both parents, but the remaining 12.6% were unaccompanied minors.
Participant Injuries More than half (54.0%) of the participants reported any musculoskeletal injury when doing farmwork in the last months, with 60.9% reporting any trauma and 72.4% reporting any dermatological injury.
Living situation Mother and father
39 (44.8)
Work Safety Culture
Mother only
33 (37.9)
Father only
4 (4.6)
Other older relative Alone
9 (10.3) 2 (2.3)
Behavioral elements. More than half (56.3%) had never ridden in the back of an uncovered truck, and 52.9% always used a seatbelt when in a car (Table 2). Four participants reported riding a motorcycle, and 11 reported riding an all-terrain vehicle in the last 12 months, but none of them reported always wearing a helmet while doing so. Few reported practicing proper work safety behaviors. Very few (8.0%) wore safety goggles when doing farm tasks. One participant of the 54 who reported working around noisy machines reported wearing hearing protection, and 1 participant of the 34 who reported
Any musculoskeletal injury experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork
47 (54.0)
Shoulder pain
29 (33.3)
Wrist pain
20 (23.0)
Knee pain
6 (6.9)
Ankle pain
5 (5.7) Continued
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TABLE 1—Continued Any trauma experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork
53 (60.9)
Cut
49 (56.3)
Burn
8 (9.2)
Eye injury
1 (1.1)
Any dermatological injury experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork Sunburn Rash
working around toxic substances or dust reported wearing a respirator. Situational elements. Few of the youth farmworkers had received training (Table 3). In the last year, 5.7% received training for pesticides, 13.8% for tool use, and 6.9% for machinery. Eight percent ever received pesticide training, and 21.8% and 8.0% ever received training for tool use and for machinery, respectively. A small but noteworthy number of youth farmworkers reported harassment. In the last year, 10.3% reported being stared at inappropriately at sensitive parts of their bodies or having a sexual remark made about them. Also in the last year, 4.6% had been brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way, and 3.4% had been offered benefits in return for a sexual favor. None had been forced to have intimate physical contact. Psychological elements. Safety attitude was mixed among the youth farmworkers (Table 4). Almost half (48.3%) agreed with the unsafe attitude that serious injuries were going to occur on a farm no matter how hard they tried to prevent them, and 36.8% agreed that they were less likely to be injured doing farmwork than were other people their age. However, 82.8% agreed with the 2 safe attitudes that working under pressure makes you less careful and that safety precautions are important, even when they slow the job. Only 15.1% of the youth farmworkers had none of the unsafe attitudes, but 57.0% had 1 and 27.9% had 2 or 3 unsafe attitudes. Many of the youth farmworkers had a sense of precarious employment. Many (41.4%) had been made to feel that they could be easily replaced, and 34.5% were afraid of being fired even though they had done nothing wrong. Fewer felt that they had been treated in
63 (72.4) 60 (69.0) 12 (13.8)
a discriminatory or unjust way (13.8%), were afraid to voice a concern about safety (12.6%), and felt defenseless against unfair treatment (11.5%). The mean for perceived work safety climate was 4.2 (SD = 2.2). Although 75.9% of the youth farmworkers felt that they had control over their personal safety and 70.1% felt that safety practices were important to management, fewer agreed with the other components of work safety climate. More than half of the youths (55.2%) felt that taking risks was not part of their job. Forty percent stated that they were regularly made aware of dangerous practices or conditions and that they received instructions on safety when hired. One third (32.2%) reported that proper safety equipment was always available, and one quarter (24.1%) reported that they were regularly praised for safe conduct. Few (8.0%) attended regular safety meetings. One quarter (23.0%) believed
that it was very likely that they would be injured in the next 12 months. Finally, although 20.7% believed that supervisors did as much as possible to make the job safe, 41.4% believed that they could do more to make the job safe, and 37.9% believed that supervisors were only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.
DISCUSSION Hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina described a negative work safety culture. Most engaged in unsafe general and unsafe work behaviors, few received training, and many experienced sexual harassment at work. They had mixed safety attitudes and knew that their employment was precarious. They reported a poor perceived work safety climate characterized by the perception that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.” With this work safety culture, it is not surprising that these youth farmworkers commonly experienced work-related injuries. However, unlike the analysis of the longitudinal study of Westaby and Lee,21 this pilot study was not able to detect statistically significant associations between the work safety culture elements and injuries among hired youth farmworkers. The work safety culture elements of these hired youth farmworkers can be compared with studies of adult farmworkers and other
TABLE 2—General Risk and Work Risk Behavioral Elements in Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Behavioral Elements
No. (%)
General risk behaviors during the last 12 mo Never rode in the back of an uncovered truck
49 (56.3)
Always used a seatbelt when driving or riding in a car
46 (52.9)
Always wore a safety helmet when riding a motorcyclea
0
Always wore a safety helmet when riding an all-terrain vehicleb
0
Work safety behaviors during the last 12 mo Always wore safety goggles when doing farmwork tasks
7 (8.0)
Always wore hearing protection when working around noisy machineryc
1 (1.9)
Always wore a respirator when working around toxic substances or dustd
1 (2.9)
a
Only 4 reported riding a motorcycle. Only 11 reported riding an all-terrain vehicle. c 54 reported working around noisy machines. d 34 reported working around toxic substances or dust. b
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TABLE 3—Situational Elements for Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Situational Elements
No. (%)
Pesticide safety training Received training in last 12 mo
5 (5.7)
Ever received training
7 (8.0)
Tool use training Received training in last 12 mo
12 (13.8)
Ever received training Machinery training
19 (21.8)
Received training in last 12 mo
6 (6.9)
Ever received training
7 (8.0)
Harassment in the last 12 mo when on farmwork job Stared at inappropriately at sensitive parts of the body
9 (10.3)
Sexual remark about you
9 (10.3)
Brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way
4 (4.6)
Offered benefits by others in return for a sexual favor Forced to have intimate physical contact
3 (3.4) 0
youth agricultural workers. The North Carolina youth farmworkers generally had lower levels of safe behaviors when compared with the safety behaviors reported by McCurdy and Kwan24 for California Latino high-school students. For the general safety behavior of never riding in the bed of an uncovered pickup truck, the North Carolina participants did fare better, with 56.3% not having ridden in the back of an uncovered pickup truck, compared with 32.3% of the California boys and 35.3% of the California girls. However, far fewer of the North Carolina youth farmworkers (52.9%) always wore a seat belt compared with 74.9% of the California boys and 88.2% of the California girls. Among the California boys doing agricultural work, 39.8% of those riding a motorcycle and 34.2% of those riding an all-terrain vehicle always wore a helmet; none of the 4 North Carolina youths who rode a motorcycle and none of the 11 who rode an all-terrain vehicle always wore a helmet. The North Carolina youth farmworkers did far worse for work safety behaviors than did the California Latino youths employed on farms. Whereas 5.7% of the North Carolina youths reported wearing safety goggles, 14.3% to 66.7% of the California youths reported wearing safety goggles, depending on task and gender. One of 54 (1.9%) North Carolina youths wore earplugs compared with 16.4% of the California boys; 1 of 34 (2.9%) North
Carolina youths wore a respirator compared with 53.3% of the California boys. Few of the youth farmworkers received training in the use of pesticides, machinery, or tools. Pesticide safety training for agricultural workers is required by the US Environmental Protection Agency Worker Protection Standard30; no such regulations exist for training in the use of machinery or tools. The small number of youths (5.7%) reporting having received pesticide safety training in the past year was far fewer than the 76.8% of adult farmworkers in North Carolina who in 2007 reported having received pesticide safety training in the past year.31 At least 1 in 10 of the youth farmworkers experienced some level of sexual harassment. We suspect that these levels were underreported. However, the reported level is unacceptable. Comparable data for youth farmworkers elsewhere are not available. Several studies reported on sexual harassment among adult women doing farmwork.32---34 However, these qualitative analyses do not provide comparative results. Two of the psychological elements indicated that the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers had a neutral work safety culture. The safety attitude risk index items were relatively positive compared with those reported for California Latino high-school students.24 Among the California students, the mean score for boys
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was 4.1 (SD = 2.3) on a 0 to 9 scale, and for girls it was 4.4 (SD = 1.0). Among the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers, many agreed with the 2 unsafe attitudes, but most agreed with the other 2 safe attitudes. The 4 indicators did not scale for the North Carolina study and cannot be directly compared with the results reported by McCurdy and Kwan.24 Many of the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers agreed with 2 of the precarious employment items,27,28 but few agreed with the other 3 items. The final psychological element, perceived work safety climate, indicated an unsafe work culture among the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers. The mean score for the 0 to 9 scale was 4.2; this is lower than the scale midpoint of 4.5. The score reported for adult Latino farmworkers20 on a 10 to 39 version of the scale was 26.6, higher than the midpoint of 24.5. Whalley et al.31 examined only the final scale item and reported that just 14.6% of the adult farmworkers stated that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply,” compared with 37.9% of the youths who gave this response. The focal aim of this analysis was to describe the workplace culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina. We also examined the associations of the youth farmworkers’ personal characteristics with each component of work safety culture and associations of each component of work safety culture with the injuries reported by the youth farmworkers. However, no consistent associations of personal characteristics with the components of work safety culture or of the work safety culture components with injuries emerged. The lack of associations found between personal characteristics and work culture measures and between work culture measures and injuries may be the result of several factors. Foremost among these was the size of the sample. Although a sample of 87 hired youth farmworkers is large relative to other studies, this was a pilot study. The sample size did not provide the power to detect associations with small coefficients. Compounding the small sample size was the age range of the participants. Ages 10 to 17 years encompass large differences in development and experience, but the small sample did not allow a focus on smaller age categories. Finally, the sample included boys and girls; McCurdy and Kwan24
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TABLE 4—Psychological Elements for Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 No. (%) or Mean 6SD
Psychological Elements Safety attitude risk index No matter how hard you try to prevent them, serious injuries are going to occur on a farm or ranch (unsafe)
42 (48.3)
You are less likely to be injured doing farmwork than are other people your age doing the same work (unsafe)
32 (36.8)
Working under time pressure makes you less careful (safe)
72 (82.8)
Safety precautions are important and necessary, even if they slow the job (safe)
72 (82.8)
Precarious employment: in the last 12 mo, has there been a time on your farmwork job when You were made to feel that you could be easily replaced by a boss or supervisor
36 (41.4)
You were afraid of being fired, even though you did nothing wrong
30 (34.5)
You were treated in a discriminatory or unjust way on your job
12 (13.8)
You were concerned about your safety on your job but were afraid to voice your concern
11 (12.6)
You felt defenseless against unfair treatment directed toward you on your job
10 (11.5)
Perceived work safety climate (agree) Workers have almost total control over personal safety
66 (75.9)
Workers’ safety practices are very important to management Taking risks is not a part of my job
61 (70.1) 48 (55.2)
Workers are regularly made aware of dangerous work practices or conditions
35 (40.2)
Workers receive instructions on safety when hired
35 (40.2)
Proper safety equipment is always available
28 (32.2)
Workers are regularly praised for safe conduct
21 (24.1)
Workers attend regular safety meetings
7 (8.0)
The possibility of being injured at work in the next 12 mo is very likelya
20 (23.0) 4.2 62.2
Summary score for perceived work safety climate How much do supervisors seem to care about your safety?
a
Supervisors do as much as possible to make my job safe
18 (20.7)
Supervisors could do more to make my job safe
36 (41.4)
Supervisors are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply
33 (37.9)
Reverse scored.
showed that boys and girls differed on many of the work safety culture elements. Other limitations of this investigation that should be considered in evaluating the results include the nonrandom nature of the sample and that all of the participants were from a single state. A possible effect on the results is that the data were collected over an extended period from very early in the agricultural season (April) to very late (November); those interviewed in the earlier part of the year may not have had the same experiences as those interviewed later in the year. These limitations notwithstanding, this pilot study provides important information on the work safety culture experienced by hired youth farmworkers. The overall work safety culture experienced by these youths is poor. At the same time, very young adolescents are allowed to
work in this environment. This poor work safety culture may be causal for the high rates of injury and mortality of youths working in agriculture.1---4 Very few regulations are in place to protect these youths. These youths also work in physical situations in which it would be difficult to get assistance if they were injured or assaulted. These results argue for the need for increased scrutiny of agriculture as a suitable industry for workers as young as 10 years. Additional research is needed to extend these results. However, based solely on these results, additional regulations to protect hired youth farmworkers, if not to remove them from the agricultural work environment, are warranted. j
About the Authors Thomas A. Arcury and Guadalupe Rodriguez are with the Department of Family and Community Medicine and
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Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC. Gregory D. Kearney is with the Department of Public Health, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. Justin T. Arcury is a statistical consultant, Raleigh, NC. Sara A. Quandt is with the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Division of Public Health Sciences, and Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine. Correspondence should be sent to Thomas A. Arcury, PhD, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157 (e-mail: tarcury@wakehealth. edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link. This article was accepted August 7, 2014.
Contributors T. A. Arcury, G. D. Kearney, and S. A. Quandt conceptualized and designed the overall study. T. A. Arcury supervised all aspects of the study’s implementation, developed the aims for this specific analysis, and led the writing of the article. G. Rodriguez managed the study. J. T. Arcury completed the statistical analysis. All authors helped to conceptualize ideas, interpret findings, and review drafts of the article.
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Acknowledgments This article was supported by the Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine, and East Carolina University.
Human Participant Protection The Wake Forest School of Medicine institutional review board approved this study.
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16. Bandura A. Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; 1976. 17. Bandura A. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; 1986. 18. Zohar D. Safety climate in industrial organizations: theoretical and applied implications. J Appl Psychol. 1980;65(1):96---102.
harassment and sexual assault experiences among Mexican indigenous farmworker women in Oregon. J Immigr Minor Health. February 11, 2014 [Epub ahead of print]. 34. Waugh IM. Examining the sexual harassment experiences of Mexican immigrant farmworking women. Violence Against Women. 2010;16(3):237---261.
19. Zohar D. Thirty years of safety climate research: reflections and future directions. Accid Anal Prev. 2010;42(5):1517---1522. 20. Arcury TA, O’Hara H, Grzywacz JG, Isom S, Chen H, Quandt SA. Work safety climate, musculoskeletal discomfort, working while injured, and depression among migrant farmworkers in North Carolina. Am J Public Health. 2012;102:S272---S278. 21. Westaby JD, Lee BC. Antecedents of injury among youth in agricultural settings: a longitudinal examination of safety consciousness, dangerous risk taking, and safety knowledge. J Safety Res. 2003;34(3):227---240. 22. McCurdy SA, Xiao H, Kwan JA. Agricultural injury among rural California public high school students. Am J Ind Med. 2012;55(1):63---75. 23. McCurdy SA, Kwan JA. Agricultural injury risk among rural California public high school students: prospective results. Am J Ind Med. 2012;55(7):631---642. 24. McCurdy SA, Kwan JA. Ethnic and gender differences in farm tasks and safety practices among rural California farm youth. J Occup Environ Hyg. 2012; 9(6):362---370. 25. Shipp EM, Cooper SP, del Junco DJ, Bolin JN, Whitworth RE, Cooper CJ. Pesticide safety training among farmworker adolescents from Starr County, Texas. J Agric Saf Health. 2007;13(3):311---321. 26. Neufeld S, Wright SM, Gaut J. Not raising a “bubble kid”: farm parents’ attitudes and practices regarding the employment, training and supervision of their children. J Rural Health. 2002;18(1):57---66. 27. Vives A, Amable M, Ferrer M, et al. The Employment Precariousness Scale (EPRES): psychometric properties of a new tool for epidemiological studies among waged and salaried workers. Occup Environ Med. 2010;67(8):548---555. 28. Vives A, Vanroelen C, Amable M, et al. Employment precariousness in Spain: prevalence, social distribution, and population-attributable risk percent of poor mental health. Int J Health Serv. 2011;41(4):625---646. 29. Gillen M, Baltz D, Gassel M, Kirsch L, Vaccaro D. Perceived safety climate, job demands, and coworker support among union and nonunion injured construction workers. J Safety Res. 2002;33(1):33---51. 30. US Environmental Protection Agency. Worker protection standard for agricultural pesticides. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/twor.html. Accessed October 9, 2014.
13. Arcury TA, Quandt SA. Delivery of health services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Annu Rev Public Health. 2007;28:345---363.
31. Whalley LE, Grzywacz JG, Quandt SA, et al. Migrant farmworker field and camp safety and sanitation in eastern North Carolina. J Agromedicine. 2009;14: 421---436.
14. Arcury TA, Quandt SA, eds. Latino Farmworkers in the Eastern United States: Health, Safety, and Justice. New York, NY: Springer; 2009.
32. Castañeda X, Zavella P. Changing constructions of sexuality and risk: migrant Mexican women farmworkers in California. J Lat Am Anthropol. 2003;8(2):126---150.
15. Cooper MD. Towards a model of safety culture. Saf Sci. 2000;36(2):111---136.
33. Murphy J, Samples J, Morales M, Shadbeh N. “They Talk Like That, but We Keep Working”: sexual
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Work Safety Culture of Youth Farmworkers in North Carolina: A Pilot Study Thomas A. Arcury, PhD, Gregory D. Kearney, DrPH, Guadalupe Rodriguez, MS, Justin T. Arcury, MS, and Sara A. Quandt, PhD
Youths employed as agricultural workers in the United States experience high rates of injury and mortality.1---4 Many youths are employed in agricultural work on their family’s farm, but many other youths are hired farmworkers working on commercial farms. Current regulations allow youths as young as 14 years to be employed as hired farmworkers without parental permission; youths aged 10 to 13 years can be employed as hired farmworkers with parental permission.5---7 Youths employed in agriculture can work with sharp tools, machinery, and pesticides, as well as do the strenuous tasks of planting, cultivating and harvesting crops, and working with large animals. Most hired youth farmworkers in the United States are Latino, and often they are either immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries or the US-born children of immigrant farmworker parents.8,9 An unknown number of youth farmworkers are unaccompanied minors who migrate for agricultural employment but are not accompanied by a parent.10,11 Hired youth farmworkers share the same vulnerabilities as adult farmworkers, including low wages, few or no benefits, few regulatory protections, hazardous work, discrimination, and limited access to health care.12---14 Youth farmworkers are especially vulnerable to occupational injuries because of their smaller size, lesser strength, and greater surface-to-volume ratio compared with adults; their developing neurological and reproductive systems; and their lack of maturity and experience. Few studies have addressed factors affecting the occupational health and safety of youths working on farms, with fewer studies focused on hired youth farmworkers. Work safety culture is an important aspect of workplace safety.15 On the basis of Bandura’s theory of reciprocal determinism,16,17 Cooper15 argued that safety culture includes behavioral, situational, and psychological elements, thereby encompassing many different aspects of the work environment. Behavioral elements
Objectives. We analyzed aspects of the behavioral, situational, and psychological elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina. Methods. Data were from interviewer-administered questionnaires completed with 87 male and female hired farmworkers aged 10 to 17 years in North Carolina in 2013. We computed means, SDs, and Cronbach a values for the perceived work safety climate and safety perception summary scores. Results. Hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina described a negative work safety culture. Most engaged in unsafe general and unsafe work behaviors, few received training, and many were sexually harassed at work. They had mixed safety attitudes and knew that their employment was precarious. They reported a poor perceived work safety climate characterized by the perception that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.” However, we could not detect statistically significant associations between work safety culture and injuries among these farmworkers. Conclusions. Increased scrutiny of agriculture as a suitable industry for workers as young as 10 years and additional regulations to protect hired youth farmworkers, if not to remove them from this environment, are warranted. Additional research is needed. (Am J Public Health. 2015;105:344–350. doi:10. 2105/AJPH.2014.302254)
include observable safety and risk behaviors. Situational elements include safety management programs and actions. Psychological elements include subjective assessments of safety. For example, work safety climate, a worker’s perceptions of how an employer values safety over production,18,19 has been related to adverse health outcomes, including musculoskeletal discomfort and working while injured or ill, among adult farmworkers.20 Westaby and Lee21 applied the work safety culture model in a longitudinal analysis of injuries among Future Farmers of America members. They found that a behavioral measure, dangerous risk taking, was positively associated with injuries; that a psychological measure, safety consciousness, was inversely related to injuries; but that a situational measure, safety knowledge, had a positive rather than a negative association with injuries. They suggested that this last, counterintuitive result may be explained by workers being placed in more dangerous environments for which they are provided greater safety information.
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Only a few elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers have been addressed in the literature. For example, among the behavioral elements, general risk behavior (e.g., not wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle) and work risk behavior (e.g., working with power tools, working with toxic substances) are positively associated with the incidence of injuries among youths working on farms.22---24 Shipp et al.25 reported that few (19%) adolescent farmworkers in Texas received pesticide safety training, a situational element. Parental attitude toward safety is another situational element that has been examined for youths working on farms.26 Having a risky attitude, a psychological element, is associated with the incidence of injuries among youths working on farms.22---24 Greater effort is needed to document work safety culture of all youths working on farms; this effort is particularly important for hired youth farmworkers because they are more vulnerable than youths working on family farms. In our analysis, we used data from a pilot study to describe aspects of the behavioral,
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situational, and psychological elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina.
METHODS Data for this analysis were from a pilot study conducted in North Carolina in 2013. The project was a collaboration of Wake Forest School of Medicine, East Carolina University, and the Farmworker Advocacy Network. All participants gave signed informed assent; when available, participants’ parents gave signed consent for their children to participate. The institutional review board approved a waiver to allow interviews with participants who did not have a parent or legal guardian present.
Participants Participants included male and female youths aged 10 to 17 years who were currently employed doing farmwork. No sampling frame for hired youth farmworkers exists. The investigators worked with organizations that provide services to farmworkers to identify potential participants. These included North Carolina FIELD (Focus on Increasing Education, Leadership, and Dignity) Coalition; Student Action With Farmworkers; North Carolina Justice Center; Columbus County Community Health, Inc.; Greene County Health Care, Inc.; North Carolina Farmworkers Project; and Migrant Education Program, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. These organizations introduced interviewers to individual farmworker families that included youth workers or to farmworker camps in which youth farmworkers were thought to live. Participants were recruited from April through November 2013. This period allowed recruitment of participants working in the diversity of crops for which youth farmworkers are employed. The recruitment process did not provide information on the total number of youth farmworkers who were asked to participate but rather who declined. Without this denominator, a participation rate could not be calculated.
Data Collection Data were collected with an intervieweradministered questionnaire. The questionnaire included items taken from an existing questionnaire22 and scales, with additional items for
the situational elements of training and harassment developed by the investigators. The questionnaire included items eliciting information on participant personal characteristics; occupational injuries; and behavioral, situational, and psychological elements of safety culture. The English questionnaire was translated to Spanish by native Spanish speakers familiar with the vernacular Spanish used by immigrant farmworkers in North Carolina. The questionnaire was pretested with young adults (aged 18 and 21 years) who had worked as youth farmworkers and revised as needed. Interviewers were bilingual native Spanish speakers familiar with agricultural workers. If a potential participant was living with a parent, then the interviewer explained the project to a parent and obtained signed consent. The interviewer explained the project to the participant, answered any questions, obtained signed assent, and conducted the interview. For unaccompanied minors, only assent was obtained. Interviews took approximately 45 minutes to complete. Participants were given a $20 incentive for completing the interview.
Measures Personal characteristics collected included gender, age (in the categories 10---13, 14---15, 16---17 years), country of birth, Hispanic ethnicity, and languages spoken. Other personal characteristics collected included whether the participant was currently attending school, years of school completed (in the categories 3---5, 6---8, and 9---12 years), and state of residence. Participants indicated if they lived with both parents, mother only, father only, other older relatives, or alone. Measures of musculoskeletal injuries in the last 12 months included specific injuries of the shoulder, wrist, knee, or ankle, as well as any musculoskeletal injury (having pain in any 1 or more of the specific musculoskeletal sites). Measures of trauma in the last 12 months included experiencing a cut, burn, or eye injury, as well as any trauma (having any 1 or more of the specific traumas). Measures of dermatological injuries in the last 12 months included having sunburn or rash and any dermatological injury (having had 1 or both of the specific dermatological injuries). Behavioral elements of work safety culture included 4 general safety behaviors and 3
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work safety behaviors.24 Participants agreed or disagreed with statements about never riding in uncovered trucks, always using seatbelts, always wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle, and always wearing a helmet when riding an all-terrain vehicle in the last 12 months (general risk behaviors); and always wearing safety goggles when doing farmwork tasks, always using hearing protection when working around noisy machinery, and wearing a respirator when working around toxic substances or dust in the last 12 months (work safety behaviors). Situational elements included training and harassment. Participants agreed or disagreed with statements about receiving training about pesticides, tool use, and machinery in the last 12 months and ever. Harassment measures were based on agreement with whether the participant experienced each of 5 behaviors in the last 12 months when doing farmwork: having been stared at inappropriately at a sensitive part of the body; having had a sexual remark made about him or her; having been brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way; having been offered benefits in return for a sexual favor; and having been forced to have intimate physical contact. Psychological elements included 3 measures. The safety attitude risk index developed by McCurdy and Kwan24 was used. It included 4 items that asked participants to agree or disagree with 2 unsafe attitudes and 2 safe attitudes, in which the unsafe attitude was coded “1” and the safe attitude was coded “0.” McCurdy and Kwan summed the responses for a total score. The Cronbach a was 0.40, making the reliability of the scale highly questionable. Therefore, results for the individual items are reported, but the sum score is not. Precarious employment was based on a 5-item scale developed by Vives et al.27,28 with which the participants agreed (1) or disagreed (0). The perceived work safety climate scale of Gillen et al.29 was used. This scale has been used in previous research with adult farmworkers.20 The scale includes 9 items with which participants agreed (1) or disagreed (0), and 1 item had 3 response categories. This final item did not scale with the first 9 items and was excluded from the total score (but was reported separately). The Cronbach a was 0.79. Higher
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TABLE 1—Personal Characteristics of Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Characteristics
No. (%)
Sex Male
54 (62.1)
Female
33 (37.9)
Age, y 10–13
23 (26.4)
14–15 16–17
34 (39.1) 30 (34.5)
scores indicated better perceived work safety climate.
Analysis We computed frequency counts and percentages for all of the measures. We computed means, SDs, and Cronbach a values for the perceived work safety climate summary score and safety perception summary score. All analyses were conducted with SAS 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC).
Country of birth United States
68 (78.2)
Mexico
16 (18.4)
Guatemala
1 (1.1)
Honduras
2 (2.3)
State of residence North Carolina Florida
77 (88.5) 6 (6.9)
Texas
2 (2.3)
Virginia
1 (1.1)
None Latino ethnicity
1 (1.1) 78 (89.7)
Race White
6 (6.9)
Black American Indian or Alaska Native
5 (5.7) 4 (4.6)
Mixed/Mestizo
72 (82.8)
Languages spoken English
68 (78.2)
Spanish
73 (83.9)
Indigenous Currently attending school Years of school completed 3–5
3 (3.4) 65 (74.7) 9 (10.3)
6–8
37 (42.5)
9–12
41 (47.1)
RESULTS Participants included boys (62.1%) and girls (37.9%) and individuals aged 10 to 13 years (26.4%), 14 to 15 years (39.1%), and 16 to 17 years (34.5%; Table 1). More than three quarters (78.2%) were born in the United States, and 88.5% were residents of North Carolina. Most (89.7%) reported Latino ethnicity, and 82.8% reported mixed or mestizo race. Most spoke English (78.2%) and Spanish (83.9%). About three quarters were still attending school; 10.3% had completed 3 to 5 years of school, 42.5% completed 6 to 8 years of school, and 47.1% completed 9 to 12 years of school. Most (87.3%) lived with one or both parents, but the remaining 12.6% were unaccompanied minors.
Participant Injuries More than half (54.0%) of the participants reported any musculoskeletal injury when doing farmwork in the last months, with 60.9% reporting any trauma and 72.4% reporting any dermatological injury.
Living situation Mother and father
39 (44.8)
Work Safety Culture
Mother only
33 (37.9)
Father only
4 (4.6)
Other older relative Alone
9 (10.3) 2 (2.3)
Behavioral elements. More than half (56.3%) had never ridden in the back of an uncovered truck, and 52.9% always used a seatbelt when in a car (Table 2). Four participants reported riding a motorcycle, and 11 reported riding an all-terrain vehicle in the last 12 months, but none of them reported always wearing a helmet while doing so. Few reported practicing proper work safety behaviors. Very few (8.0%) wore safety goggles when doing farm tasks. One participant of the 54 who reported working around noisy machines reported wearing hearing protection, and 1 participant of the 34 who reported
Any musculoskeletal injury experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork
47 (54.0)
Shoulder pain
29 (33.3)
Wrist pain
20 (23.0)
Knee pain
6 (6.9)
Ankle pain
5 (5.7) Continued
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TABLE 1—Continued Any trauma experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork
53 (60.9)
Cut
49 (56.3)
Burn
8 (9.2)
Eye injury
1 (1.1)
Any dermatological injury experienced in the last 12 mo when doing farmwork Sunburn Rash
working around toxic substances or dust reported wearing a respirator. Situational elements. Few of the youth farmworkers had received training (Table 3). In the last year, 5.7% received training for pesticides, 13.8% for tool use, and 6.9% for machinery. Eight percent ever received pesticide training, and 21.8% and 8.0% ever received training for tool use and for machinery, respectively. A small but noteworthy number of youth farmworkers reported harassment. In the last year, 10.3% reported being stared at inappropriately at sensitive parts of their bodies or having a sexual remark made about them. Also in the last year, 4.6% had been brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way, and 3.4% had been offered benefits in return for a sexual favor. None had been forced to have intimate physical contact. Psychological elements. Safety attitude was mixed among the youth farmworkers (Table 4). Almost half (48.3%) agreed with the unsafe attitude that serious injuries were going to occur on a farm no matter how hard they tried to prevent them, and 36.8% agreed that they were less likely to be injured doing farmwork than were other people their age. However, 82.8% agreed with the 2 safe attitudes that working under pressure makes you less careful and that safety precautions are important, even when they slow the job. Only 15.1% of the youth farmworkers had none of the unsafe attitudes, but 57.0% had 1 and 27.9% had 2 or 3 unsafe attitudes. Many of the youth farmworkers had a sense of precarious employment. Many (41.4%) had been made to feel that they could be easily replaced, and 34.5% were afraid of being fired even though they had done nothing wrong. Fewer felt that they had been treated in
63 (72.4) 60 (69.0) 12 (13.8)
a discriminatory or unjust way (13.8%), were afraid to voice a concern about safety (12.6%), and felt defenseless against unfair treatment (11.5%). The mean for perceived work safety climate was 4.2 (SD = 2.2). Although 75.9% of the youth farmworkers felt that they had control over their personal safety and 70.1% felt that safety practices were important to management, fewer agreed with the other components of work safety climate. More than half of the youths (55.2%) felt that taking risks was not part of their job. Forty percent stated that they were regularly made aware of dangerous practices or conditions and that they received instructions on safety when hired. One third (32.2%) reported that proper safety equipment was always available, and one quarter (24.1%) reported that they were regularly praised for safe conduct. Few (8.0%) attended regular safety meetings. One quarter (23.0%) believed
that it was very likely that they would be injured in the next 12 months. Finally, although 20.7% believed that supervisors did as much as possible to make the job safe, 41.4% believed that they could do more to make the job safe, and 37.9% believed that supervisors were only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.
DISCUSSION Hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina described a negative work safety culture. Most engaged in unsafe general and unsafe work behaviors, few received training, and many experienced sexual harassment at work. They had mixed safety attitudes and knew that their employment was precarious. They reported a poor perceived work safety climate characterized by the perception that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.” With this work safety culture, it is not surprising that these youth farmworkers commonly experienced work-related injuries. However, unlike the analysis of the longitudinal study of Westaby and Lee,21 this pilot study was not able to detect statistically significant associations between the work safety culture elements and injuries among hired youth farmworkers. The work safety culture elements of these hired youth farmworkers can be compared with studies of adult farmworkers and other
TABLE 2—General Risk and Work Risk Behavioral Elements in Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Behavioral Elements
No. (%)
General risk behaviors during the last 12 mo Never rode in the back of an uncovered truck
49 (56.3)
Always used a seatbelt when driving or riding in a car
46 (52.9)
Always wore a safety helmet when riding a motorcyclea
0
Always wore a safety helmet when riding an all-terrain vehicleb
0
Work safety behaviors during the last 12 mo Always wore safety goggles when doing farmwork tasks
7 (8.0)
Always wore hearing protection when working around noisy machineryc
1 (1.9)
Always wore a respirator when working around toxic substances or dustd
1 (2.9)
a
Only 4 reported riding a motorcycle. Only 11 reported riding an all-terrain vehicle. c 54 reported working around noisy machines. d 34 reported working around toxic substances or dust. b
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TABLE 3—Situational Elements for Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 Situational Elements
No. (%)
Pesticide safety training Received training in last 12 mo
5 (5.7)
Ever received training
7 (8.0)
Tool use training Received training in last 12 mo
12 (13.8)
Ever received training Machinery training
19 (21.8)
Received training in last 12 mo
6 (6.9)
Ever received training
7 (8.0)
Harassment in the last 12 mo when on farmwork job Stared at inappropriately at sensitive parts of the body
9 (10.3)
Sexual remark about you
9 (10.3)
Brushed against, touched, or grabbed by someone in an unwanted way
4 (4.6)
Offered benefits by others in return for a sexual favor Forced to have intimate physical contact
3 (3.4) 0
youth agricultural workers. The North Carolina youth farmworkers generally had lower levels of safe behaviors when compared with the safety behaviors reported by McCurdy and Kwan24 for California Latino high-school students. For the general safety behavior of never riding in the bed of an uncovered pickup truck, the North Carolina participants did fare better, with 56.3% not having ridden in the back of an uncovered pickup truck, compared with 32.3% of the California boys and 35.3% of the California girls. However, far fewer of the North Carolina youth farmworkers (52.9%) always wore a seat belt compared with 74.9% of the California boys and 88.2% of the California girls. Among the California boys doing agricultural work, 39.8% of those riding a motorcycle and 34.2% of those riding an all-terrain vehicle always wore a helmet; none of the 4 North Carolina youths who rode a motorcycle and none of the 11 who rode an all-terrain vehicle always wore a helmet. The North Carolina youth farmworkers did far worse for work safety behaviors than did the California Latino youths employed on farms. Whereas 5.7% of the North Carolina youths reported wearing safety goggles, 14.3% to 66.7% of the California youths reported wearing safety goggles, depending on task and gender. One of 54 (1.9%) North Carolina youths wore earplugs compared with 16.4% of the California boys; 1 of 34 (2.9%) North
Carolina youths wore a respirator compared with 53.3% of the California boys. Few of the youth farmworkers received training in the use of pesticides, machinery, or tools. Pesticide safety training for agricultural workers is required by the US Environmental Protection Agency Worker Protection Standard30; no such regulations exist for training in the use of machinery or tools. The small number of youths (5.7%) reporting having received pesticide safety training in the past year was far fewer than the 76.8% of adult farmworkers in North Carolina who in 2007 reported having received pesticide safety training in the past year.31 At least 1 in 10 of the youth farmworkers experienced some level of sexual harassment. We suspect that these levels were underreported. However, the reported level is unacceptable. Comparable data for youth farmworkers elsewhere are not available. Several studies reported on sexual harassment among adult women doing farmwork.32---34 However, these qualitative analyses do not provide comparative results. Two of the psychological elements indicated that the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers had a neutral work safety culture. The safety attitude risk index items were relatively positive compared with those reported for California Latino high-school students.24 Among the California students, the mean score for boys
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was 4.1 (SD = 2.3) on a 0 to 9 scale, and for girls it was 4.4 (SD = 1.0). Among the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers, many agreed with the 2 unsafe attitudes, but most agreed with the other 2 safe attitudes. The 4 indicators did not scale for the North Carolina study and cannot be directly compared with the results reported by McCurdy and Kwan.24 Many of the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers agreed with 2 of the precarious employment items,27,28 but few agreed with the other 3 items. The final psychological element, perceived work safety climate, indicated an unsafe work culture among the North Carolina hired youth farmworkers. The mean score for the 0 to 9 scale was 4.2; this is lower than the scale midpoint of 4.5. The score reported for adult Latino farmworkers20 on a 10 to 39 version of the scale was 26.6, higher than the midpoint of 24.5. Whalley et al.31 examined only the final scale item and reported that just 14.6% of the adult farmworkers stated that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply,” compared with 37.9% of the youths who gave this response. The focal aim of this analysis was to describe the workplace culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina. We also examined the associations of the youth farmworkers’ personal characteristics with each component of work safety culture and associations of each component of work safety culture with the injuries reported by the youth farmworkers. However, no consistent associations of personal characteristics with the components of work safety culture or of the work safety culture components with injuries emerged. The lack of associations found between personal characteristics and work culture measures and between work culture measures and injuries may be the result of several factors. Foremost among these was the size of the sample. Although a sample of 87 hired youth farmworkers is large relative to other studies, this was a pilot study. The sample size did not provide the power to detect associations with small coefficients. Compounding the small sample size was the age range of the participants. Ages 10 to 17 years encompass large differences in development and experience, but the small sample did not allow a focus on smaller age categories. Finally, the sample included boys and girls; McCurdy and Kwan24
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TABLE 4—Psychological Elements for Youth Farmworkers (n = 87): North Carolina, 2013 No. (%) or Mean 6SD
Psychological Elements Safety attitude risk index No matter how hard you try to prevent them, serious injuries are going to occur on a farm or ranch (unsafe)
42 (48.3)
You are less likely to be injured doing farmwork than are other people your age doing the same work (unsafe)
32 (36.8)
Working under time pressure makes you less careful (safe)
72 (82.8)
Safety precautions are important and necessary, even if they slow the job (safe)
72 (82.8)
Precarious employment: in the last 12 mo, has there been a time on your farmwork job when You were made to feel that you could be easily replaced by a boss or supervisor
36 (41.4)
You were afraid of being fired, even though you did nothing wrong
30 (34.5)
You were treated in a discriminatory or unjust way on your job
12 (13.8)
You were concerned about your safety on your job but were afraid to voice your concern
11 (12.6)
You felt defenseless against unfair treatment directed toward you on your job
10 (11.5)
Perceived work safety climate (agree) Workers have almost total control over personal safety
66 (75.9)
Workers’ safety practices are very important to management Taking risks is not a part of my job
61 (70.1) 48 (55.2)
Workers are regularly made aware of dangerous work practices or conditions
35 (40.2)
Workers receive instructions on safety when hired
35 (40.2)
Proper safety equipment is always available
28 (32.2)
Workers are regularly praised for safe conduct
21 (24.1)
Workers attend regular safety meetings
7 (8.0)
The possibility of being injured at work in the next 12 mo is very likelya
20 (23.0) 4.2 62.2
Summary score for perceived work safety climate How much do supervisors seem to care about your safety?
a
Supervisors do as much as possible to make my job safe
18 (20.7)
Supervisors could do more to make my job safe
36 (41.4)
Supervisors are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply
33 (37.9)
Reverse scored.
showed that boys and girls differed on many of the work safety culture elements. Other limitations of this investigation that should be considered in evaluating the results include the nonrandom nature of the sample and that all of the participants were from a single state. A possible effect on the results is that the data were collected over an extended period from very early in the agricultural season (April) to very late (November); those interviewed in the earlier part of the year may not have had the same experiences as those interviewed later in the year. These limitations notwithstanding, this pilot study provides important information on the work safety culture experienced by hired youth farmworkers. The overall work safety culture experienced by these youths is poor. At the same time, very young adolescents are allowed to
work in this environment. This poor work safety culture may be causal for the high rates of injury and mortality of youths working in agriculture.1---4 Very few regulations are in place to protect these youths. These youths also work in physical situations in which it would be difficult to get assistance if they were injured or assaulted. These results argue for the need for increased scrutiny of agriculture as a suitable industry for workers as young as 10 years. Additional research is needed to extend these results. However, based solely on these results, additional regulations to protect hired youth farmworkers, if not to remove them from the agricultural work environment, are warranted. j
About the Authors Thomas A. Arcury and Guadalupe Rodriguez are with the Department of Family and Community Medicine and
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Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC. Gregory D. Kearney is with the Department of Public Health, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. Justin T. Arcury is a statistical consultant, Raleigh, NC. Sara A. Quandt is with the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Division of Public Health Sciences, and Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine. Correspondence should be sent to Thomas A. Arcury, PhD, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157 (e-mail: tarcury@wakehealth. edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link. This article was accepted August 7, 2014.
Contributors T. A. Arcury, G. D. Kearney, and S. A. Quandt conceptualized and designed the overall study. T. A. Arcury supervised all aspects of the study’s implementation, developed the aims for this specific analysis, and led the writing of the article. G. Rodriguez managed the study. J. T. Arcury completed the statistical analysis. All authors helped to conceptualize ideas, interpret findings, and review drafts of the article.
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RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
Acknowledgments This article was supported by the Center for Worker Health, Wake Forest School of Medicine, and East Carolina University.
Human Participant Protection The Wake Forest School of Medicine institutional review board approved this study.
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