Evaluating Teen Farmworker Education: An Evaluation of a High School ESL Health and Safety Curriculum

Details

• Personal Author:
  Baker R ; Meyers J ; Teran S
• Description:
  Children and adolescents working in agriculture face significant health and safety risks and experience work-related injuries and illnesses at a higher rate than youth working in other industries. Most research to date has focused on youth on family farms, and very little data is available on hired teens. There are needs both to better document the characteristics of hired teens and their experience with injury and illness and to pilot and evaluate interventions for educating and protecting these teens. The Teens Working in Agriculture English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum is designed to provide teen agricultural workers with the knowledge and tools to protect their health and safety in the fields. The six-session curriculum focuses on three outcome areas: increased knowledge, about laws protecting teen agricultural workers, health and safety hazards, ways to address those hazards and where youth can report them; improved attitudes, including the awareness of the dangers inherent in agricultural labor and the understanding by youth that they can take actions to protect their health and safety; and new behaviors that will reduce the risk of work-related injuries and illnesses. The specific aims of the study were to: 1) assess whether students who participated in the curriculum would demonstrate an increase in knowledge and improved attitudes and behaviors regarding health and safety, as compared to a comparison group; 2) assess whether a community-based intervention, in the form of workshops on health and safety for parents of students receiving the curriculum, would increase outcomes even further; and 3) explore and pilot outreach and education methods that could be successful in reaching hired teen farmworkers. Approach: The project targeted young farmworkers who were enrolled in high school ESL classes in several counties of California's San Joaquin Valley. Using a quasi-experimental design, the research included three study groups consisting of over 2,000 students. One intervention group consisted of students receiving the school-based curriculum, while the second intervention group included students who received the curriculum and whose parents/guardians attended community-based workshops on health and safety. A comparison group consisted of students who were enrolled in ESL classes but who did not receive any intervention. Changes in knowledge and attitudes were evaluated by means of pre- and post-tests that were administered to students in the intervention and comparison groups. Knowledge retention and behavior change were measured via a follow-up survey conducted with intervention and comparison group students who worked in the fields the summer following the curriculum. The quantitative data were complemented with qualitative data gathered from focus groups with students, as well as from interviews with teachers implementing the curriculum and parents attending the community-based workshops. Findings: The study found that a school-based ESL curriculum is an effective intervention to reach and educate teen farmworkers. The research findings reveal that the curriculum has had a number of impacts with respect to the three principal outcomes. There was a significant impact in terms of increases in knowledge among students who received the curriculum. There were significant increases, for example, in students' awareness of laws that protect workers' health and safety. Students in the intervention group that knew of laws that protect workers increased from 17% at baseline to 67% at post-test, to 57% at follow-up. (Comparison group went from 13% to 13% to 18%.) The intervention group was also able to identify a greater number of problems and solutions, and to provide more specific examples of these. A twelve-question section gauged student attitudes toward health and safety in the fields at pre- and post-test. The percentage of the intervention group answering all questions correctly increased from 37% at pre-test to 53% at post-test, with a more modest increase of 37% to 42% among the comparison group. Students in both groups scored highly on the attitudinal questions at pre-test, such that the increases from pre to post were small. Nearly half of the intervention group reported implementing new behaviors to protect their health and safety, compared with 33% of those in the comparison group. The most notable behavior changes among students in the intervention group were the percentage of youth under the age of 16 who reported working with pesticides, which decreased by 96%, and the percentage of youth under age 16 who reported driving a tractor, a 93% decrease. Other notable impacts included a 49% increase in the percentage of respondents not lifting heavy items without asking for help, and a 20% increase in youth reporting wearing long-sleeved shirts for protection from the sun. However, interpretation of the data on behavior is limited by a low response rate. With respect to the study's second aim of assessing the impact of community workshops for parents, the research findings reveal virtually no associations between parent participation in health and safety workshops and student outcomes. Parents, however, responded to the community workshops with enthusiasm and the majority reported talking to their children about what they had learned. The curriculum also had spillover effects beyond the students; 73% of follow-up survey respondents in the intervention group reported sharing information learned in the classes with others. Of those, the majority (74%) shared information with parents, followed by friends (32%), relatives (31%) and coworkers (19%). The fact that so many youth shared this information with parents, siblings, other relatives, friends and coworkers indicates the important role youth can play in educating other farmworkers. Data limitations include the fact that the evaluation was not able to include sufficient numbers of students who had completed all three surveys to meet power calculation criteria, which may have limited our ability to detect subtle differences between groups. Also, all data gathered on attitudes and behaviors is based on self-report. Conclusions: The research findings demonstrate that the Teens Working in Agriculture curriculum is an effective means of teaching adolescent farmworkers in California about agricultural health and safety. The study also shows that school-based ESL classes can serve as a much needed access point for young farmworkers, as over half of the intervention group students reported working in agriculture. Teachers were willing to teach the curriculum, and those who came from farmworker families themselves were particularly enthusiastic about providing teens with this information. The need for this information is also evident. Only one-fourth of all students reported getting information about health and safety through other venues, such as other classes, work or in the community. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Agriculture Behavior Farmers Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Adolescents Agricultural Industry Children Community Based Curriculum Development Farm Workers Intervention Effectiveness Occupational Health Programs Occupational Safety Programs Teenagers Young Workers

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• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-55
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20056698
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2019-101412
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, R01-OH-004222, 2004 Nov; :1-55
• Contact Point Address:
  Labor Occupational Health Program, UC Berkeley, 2223 Fulton Street, Fourth Floor, Berkeley, CA 94720-5120
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2005
• Performing Organization:
  University of California, Berkeley
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20000930
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20040929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c93f178d4ab6dd763cd7d5baaa7302f4b8dcd3cf352e9a0c4f1acdf7b413ded3cbcd1c96ee2f2f1ae213426795f3c6446d6db77ba27f0d8c4213771e521bc588
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/218908/cdc_218908_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 708.38 KB ]