Error communication in young farm workers: Its

Work & Stress Vol. 23, No. 4, October
December 2009, 297
312

Error communication in young farm workers: Its relationship to safety climate and safety locus of control Konstantin P. Cigularova*, Peter Y. Chenb and Lorann Stallonesb a

Institute of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA; bDepartment of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Previous research has suggested that open communication about errors at work plays an important role in promoting occupational safety. The current study focused on error communication by young farm workers in the light of increasing concerns about young workers’ safety and the need to investigate its determinants. Specifically, we examined the effects of safety locus of control and safety climate on young workers’ communications about their errors in farm work. A cross-sectional telephone survey was administered to a randomly selected sample of adolescents, aged 13
18 years, who resided and worked on family farms in Colorado, United States. Responses from 244 young farm workers were analyzed. Our results indicated that young farm workers who reported having a high internal safety locus of control and perceived a positive safety climate were more likely to openly communicate their mistakes at work to their parents who owned the farms. Further, safety climate significantly buffered against the negative effects of external safety locus of control on error communication. These findings highlight the importance of individual and contextual factors in promoting farm safety and have implications for designing and implementing interventions to target young farm workers. They may also prove to be relevant to the error communication of young workers in other industries and occupations. Keywords: agriculture; young farm workers; safety climate; safety locus of control; error communication; farming

Introduction Work in agricultural settings is known to be more hazardous than that in many other occupations (Ruser, 1998), particularly among young workers (Hard et al., 1999). According to Hard and Myers (2006), the injury rate of young farm workers is higher than that in all other industries by a factor of 3.6. The National Agricultural Statistics Service (2004) further revealed that in the United States there were 22,648 agricultural-related injuries among young farm workers under the age of 20 in 2001, which translates into 1.4 injuries a year per 100 farms. However, the number of injuries among young farm workers is likely to be underreported because the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not investigate work-related deaths among youth working on farms (i.e. younger than 20 years of age, Dunn & Runyan, 1993). In addition, in the United States there are no age or hazard *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0267-8373 print/ISSN 1464-5335 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02678370903416679 http://www.informaworld.com

298

K. P. Cigularov et al.

restrictions for young farm workers working on their own parents’ farms (Belville, Pollack, Goldbold, & Landrigan, 1993). Hawk, Gay, and Donham (1991) estimated that in Iowa the average age when children began to operate farm equipment was 12 years and to drive tractors was 11.4 years, while the average age children began to ride on tractors with an adult was 3.4 years. Similar to adult farm workers, young farm workers engage in one or more of the following activities: ploughing, planting, fertilizing, harvesting crops, repairing pens and gates, raising livestock, milking, breeding, birthing, tending sick or injured animals, mixing feed, feeding, moving animals, cleaning stalls and corrals, and so on. These activities present numerous opportunities to make unintentional errors, which often lead to injuries or even death. For example, incorrectly using harvesters and chain saws or applying herbicides or insecticides can have a detrimental impact on farm workers’ health. Human errors are ubiquitous at work and often set the stage for the occurrence of injuries, regardless of type of job or occupation (Reason, 1990). Compared with adult farm workers, young farm workers are likely to be more susceptible to errors because of lack of experience in farm work, frequent exposures in the hazardous work environment without adequate protections, and engaging in risk taking behaviours due to feelings of invincibility (Cotton, 1997; Darragh, Stallones, Sample, & Sweitzer, 1998). Research has shown that adolescents differ from adults in how they store, access, and respond to hazard information (Baird & Fugelsang, 2004). In studying brain activity in adolescent and adult samples faced with a series of dangerous and safe scenarios, Baird and Fugelsang found that, compared to adults, adolescents took significantly longer to decide upon the dangerousness of the scenarios and to produce a correct response, appeared to rely more on reasoning to determine whether a scenario was dangerous, and were less likely to have a general mental image and associated visceral response available to guide their decision-making. Consequently, open communication about errors (i.e. error communication) of young farm workers may play an important role in their safety on the job. If young farm workers feel comfortable telling others about their mistakes or errors in their work, there will be a greater chance to deal effectively with those errors, as well as to learn from them (Frese, 1995). As a result, injuries to farm workers may be reduced in number and severity. This reasoning is consistent with research showing that frequent error communication is associated with the reduction of back injuries and medication errors among nurses (Hofmann & Mark, 2006; Mark et al., 2007). In addition to Hofmann and Mark (2006), past research has suggested that occupational safety in general could benefit from enhanced communication and information sharing about safety and errors (e.g., Hofmann & Morgeson, 1999). However, there is a lack of research in agricultural safety examining factors that would facilitate or enhance error communication. To address this gap, the present study focused on two understudied protective factors in the agricultural safety literature, namely safety locus of control and safety climate, and the extent to which these aspects of safety might influence young workers’ communications about their errors in farm work. Safety locus of control refers to the tendencies of individuals to either believe that they are personally responsible for their safety and that they can act to prevent accidents and injuries (i.e. internal safety locus of control) or that they have little or no control over their safety and accident prevention (i.e. external safety locus of control) (Jones &

Work & Stress

299

Wuebker, 1985). Safety locus of control has been considered to be an important factor in workplace safety as indicated by its associations with injuries and safety behaviours (Janicak, 1996; Jones & Wuebker, 1993; Wuebker, 1986). Safety climate reflects employees’ perceptions of organizational policies, procedures, and practices pertaining to occupational safety, as well as the overall importance and priority of safety to the organization and its management (Zohar, 2003). Since Zohar’s (1980) first introduction of the concept of safety climate, researchers have found significant support for the contention that safety climate is an important antecedent to occupational safety and performance (Clarke, 2006). Positive safety climate has been consistently associated with increased work-related safety behaviours and reduced accidents and injuries in various industrial settings, samples, and nationalities (Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke, 2009; Clarke, 2006). While the above-cited research has highlighted the important roles of safety locus of control and safety climate in occupational safety, it has mainly focused on industries other than agriculture (e.g. manufacturing, construction) and on working adults. Thus, these findings may not be directly generalized to the farming context, which differs from other industries in terms of working conditions, roles, and norms (Olson & Schellenberg, 1986), or to young farm workers, who may differ from working adults in terms of attitudes, decision-making, and reactions to social influences in relation to safety (Baird & Fugelsang, 2004; Darragh et al., 1998). Moreover, an extensive literature search revealed only three published studies examining locus of control in a farm safety context, revealing mixed findings (Elkind, 2007; Glasscock, Rasmussen, Carstensen, & Hansen, 2006; Grieshop, Stiles, & Villanueva, 1996), and no published studies examining safety climate in farming. In addition, safety locus of control and safety climate have not been examined together as predictors of safety behaviours in farming or any other industry. Consequently, the present study is a first effort to investigate the independent and interactive effects of safety locus of control and safety climate on error communication among young farm workers. Safety locus of control and error communication Locus of control is a much studied individual characteristic (Ng, Sorensen, & Eby, 2006), which describes the extent to which one believes that the consequences of their behaviours are controlled by themselves (i.e. internal locus of control) versus the environment and others (i.e. external locus of control) (Rotter, 1966). In the occupational safety context, safety-specific locus of control refers to workers’ beliefs or perceptions about who controls safety events at work. Workers with internal safety locus of control (i.e. internals) tend to believe that they are responsible for their safety and can prevent accidents and injuries. Unlike them, externals tend to believe that ‘‘accidents and injuries are due to forces outside their control, such as chance, fate, or bad luck’’ (Jones & Wuebker, 1985, p. 152). Past research has shown significant associations of both general and safety locus of control with safety behaviours and injuries. In their recent meta-analysis, Christian et al. (2009) revealed mean corrected correlations of .35 and .26 of locus of control with safety behaviours and accidents/injuries, respectively, after combining studies with general and safety locus of control measures. Other studies

300

K. P. Cigularov et al.

examining safety locus of control, not included in the above meta-analysis, have also shown similar results. For example, Janicak (1996) and Jones and Wuebker (1985) found that workers with an internal safety locus of control experienced fewer and less severe occupational injuries compared to those with an external safety locus of control. In the context of farm safety, workers with an internal safety locus of control are more likely to believe that a strong relationship exists between their safety behaviours and safety outcomes (e.g. incidents or injuries) (Grieshop et al., 1996). In contrast, workers with an external safety locus of control tend to believe that farm injuries are not determined by their own safety behaviour, but are instead contingent upon forces outside of themselves such as fate, luck, chance, or powerful others. As a result, internals would be more likely than externals to engage in safety behaviours, such as error communication, in attempts to control their environment, because the former expect that their efforts will pay off (Spector, 1982). Extending from the above findings, it is expected that young farm workers with an internal safety locus of control would be more likely than those with an external safety locus of control to discuss their own errors with parents in order to control safety outcomes. Thus, it is hypothesized that: Hypothesis 1: Safety locus of control will be positively associated with error communication. Specifically, young farm workers with an internal safety locus of control will be more likely to communicate work-related errors to their parents than will those with an external safety locus of control.

Safety climate and error communication Safety climate has been conceptualized as workers’ perceptions pertaining to practices, policies, and procedures related to safety, as well as the relative priority of safety over schedules and production (Zohar, 2003). Accordingly, in the current study, we conceptualized safety climate as young farm workers’ perceptions of the policies, procedures, and practices pertaining to farm safety, as well as the relative importance and priority of safety over production, as espoused by their parents. A positive safety climate suggests that the farm owners (i.e. parents) value workers’ well-being and are concerned about their safety. Research has indicated that safety climate is an important antecedent to occupational safety and performance (Christian et al., 2009; Clarke, 2006). In fact, safety climate has been shown to positively affect safety behaviours, work-related injuries and pains, as well as the reporting of injury incidents in various industries (Cigularov, Chen, & Smith, 2008; Griffin & Neal, 2000; Zohar, 2003). Furthermore, research suggests that a positive safety climate, shaped by supervisors’ positive interactions with workers (Zohar & Luria, 2003) and their committed and constructive approach to dealing with safety-related issues, is related to improved communications about safety and errors (Hofmann & Mark, 2006; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1998). Moreover, open communication about safety issues has been considered an important aspect of a positive safety climate (e.g. Lin, Tang, Miao, Wang, & Wang, 2008). The influence of safety climate would be especially profound for young farm workers, who work on their own parents’ farms, because parents’ attitudes about risks, concerns about safety versus production, and daily safety practices would shape their children’s attitudes and behaviours (Bandura,

Work & Stress

301

1977). Thus, it is expected that young farm workers would be more willing to share their mistakes at work when there is strong support for and commitment to safety. Hence, it is expected that: Hypothesis 2: Safety climate will be positively associated with error communication. Specifically, young farm workers, who perceive a positive safety climate, will be more likely to communicate work-related errors to their parents than will those who perceive a less positive safety climate.

Moderating effect of safety climate It has been argued that the same work environment may elicit different reactions from different individuals (Schneider, 1983; Spector, 1982), and that individuals with an external locus of control are generally more susceptible to social influences than are those with an internal locus of control (Biondo & MacDonald, 1971). Research has shown that, compared to internals’ behaviour, externals’ behaviour is more affected by the perceived work environment (Smith-Jentsch, Salas, & Brannick, 2001; Storms & Spector, 1987; Witt, 1989). For example, in a training transfer study of 80 pilots, Smith-Jentsch et al. (2001) found that perceptions of team transfer climate were a better predictor of posttraining behaviours for external trainees than for internal trainees. Storms and Spector (1987) also showed that externals were more likely than internals to engage in counterproductive behaviours when frustration was high. Witt (1989) found a positive effect of psychological climate on self-presentation behaviours of bank employees with external locus of control, but not on those with internal locus of control. Extending from the above research, we propose that positive safety climate will have a stronger impact on the error communication behaviours of young farm workers with external safety locus of control, compared to those with internal safety locus of control. Our reasoning is that young farm workers with an external safety locus of control would not bother to discuss or share their errors at work since they believe that safety outcomes are primarily determined by their environment, rather than their behaviour. However, externals working in a farm with a positive safety climate might be compelled to discuss and share their errors more often than externals working in a farm with a negative safety climate. Furthermore, prior research suggests that aspects of a positive safety climate, such as management commitment to safety or enforcement of safety policies, have been shown to foster communication about safety issues, and to provide a sense of security for workers to discuss safety concerns including errors, mistakes, or near-misses (Hofmann & Mark, 2006; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1998). In addition, safety climate can act as an enhancing environmental factor in relation to safety. For example, Mark et al. (2007) found that at higher levels of safety climate, better working conditions were related to fewer back injuries among nurses. Huang, Chen, DeArmond, Cigularov, and Chen (2007) found that night shift workers reported significantly lower perceptions of injury risk when they perceived a positive safety climate rather than a poor safety climate. Probst (2004) showed that a positive safety climate attenuated negative effects of job insecurity on safety outcomes, both positive and negative, such as safety knowledge, safety compliance, accidents, and injuries. To summarize, it seems reasonable to expect that young farm workers with an external safety locus of control would likely discuss safety issues or concerns more

302

K. P. Cigularov et al.

often on a farm with a positive safety climate than on a farm with a less positive safety climate. Yet, young farm workers with an internal safety locus of control would be affected relatively less when safety climate is either poor or positive because they tend to believe that it is what they do (e.g. communication about safety concerns) rather than situational factors (e.g. climate) that affect safety outcomes. Specifically, it is expected that: Hypothesis 3: Safety climate perceptions will interact with safety locus of control in predicting error communication. Young farm workers having an external locus of control who perceive a positive safety climate will communicate work-related errors more often to their parents than will external young farm workers working in a farm with a less positive safety climate. The error communication of young farmers with an internal locus of control will be less affected by safety climate.

Method Participants Participants in this study included 244 adolescents coming from 202 farm families, who reported working on a farm. Of the 202 families, 128 families had one adolescent child, 63 families had two adolescent children, and 11 families had three adolescent children. Not all of the adolescents were available or agreed to participate. The size of the farm operations where farm workers resided ranged from less than 100 acres (41%) to more than 1000 acres (27.5%). Two-thirds (66.8%) of the farms were working mostly with livestock rather than crops. The age of young farm workers ranged from 13 to 18 years with a mean of 15.5 years (SD 1.6), and approximately half were less than 16 years old (n125). On average, they worked in their farms during the week for 6.6 hours, and at the weekends for 5.3 hours. Procedure Young farm workers between 13 and 18 years of age, residing on farms in Colorado, a western state of the United States, were interviewed by telephone using random digit dialling by means of a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system. The sampling frame for the study consisted of 61 counties that had more than 20 farms. The total potential respondents in each county were estimated based on the number of farms. Also, the count of phone numbers needed was estimated based on the following assumptions: There would be 1.2 teenagers per family in farm families; 40% of farm families have teenagers; a response rate of 50% is expected; and the efficiency of the sample frame would be 20% due to unoccupied dwellings and ineligible residences, which was based on a previous survey of farm residents. Therefore, it was estimated that 10,000 sample units (i.e. farms) would be required. Based on the above criteria, 18 counties were randomly selected. These counties contained 36.8% of all farms in the state (n10,419). Property value assessment lists from the selected counties provided the names of the property owners of the land. Parcels of land taxed as farm land were linked to owner/operator names and matched to electronic telephone lists and also hard copies of phone books when needed. A total of 11,726 telephone numbers were first generated, and each one was called up to 10 times before removing them from the sample list. Of those contacted, 4994 (43.8%) were not eligible to participate because they resided in a place where

Work & Stress

303

less than $1000 in agricultural produce was sold on average per year, which is the standard United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) definition of a farm. In addition, on 3846 (33.7%) of the farms there was no adolescent in residence; and 1848 (15.9%) of the telephone numbers were not private residences, could never be reached, or had been disconnected. Therefore, a total of 724 eligible farm households were successfully contacted. The telephone interviews were conducted by trained interviewers working for the Survey Research Unit at the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. All interviewers received a minimum of 20 hours of training, which included interviewing procedures, the survey instrument, and standardized research interviewing skills. The interviewers were aware of the purpose of the study as they had to obtain consent for participation. Parents were asked a set of questions and detailed questions were asked from the adolescents. Informed consent for the interview was obtained from parents for their interview and for permission to interview the adolescents. Consent was also obtained from the interviewed adolescents. The study procedures were reviewed and approved by the Human Research Committee at Colorado State University and the Institutional Review Board of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. In total, 294 (40.6%) parents agreed to allow contact with their adolescent(s) and responded to the survey. By the end of the study period, 262 adolescents who resided on 212 (76.0%) farms were interviewed. Of those, 244 provided usable data. Measures Safety locus of control. The extent to which young farm workers believed that farm injuries could be controlled by themselves was assessed by a 5-item safety locus of control scale, modified from Jones and Wuebker’s (1985) 17-item Safety Locus of Control Scale. We selected the five items based on factor loadings and relevance. The scale contained six response categories ranging from ‘‘strongly disagree’’ (1) to ‘‘strongly agree’’ (6). Examples of items were: ‘‘Farm accidents are due to farm workers’ carelessness,’’ and ‘‘Most accidents or injuries on the farm can be avoided.’’ High scores indicate high internal safety locus of control (i.e. beliefs that accidents or injuries could be avoided by farm workers). Safety climate. Similar to prior studies (e.g. Gillen, Baltz, Gassel, Kirsch, & Vaccaro, 2002; Zohar & Luria, 2003), the current study focused on individual perceptions of safety climate. Young farm workers’ perceptions of their parents’ reactions and attitudes towards safety behaviour were assessed by five items modified from Zohar’s (2000) safety climate scale. The five items with the highest factor loadings and relevance were chosen. The scale contained five response options ranging from ‘‘not at all’’ (1) to ‘‘totally’’ (5). Examples of items included: ‘‘My parents say a good word whenever they see a job done according to the safety rules,’’ and ‘‘My parents seriously consider any of the farm worker suggestions for improving safety,’’ respectively. High scores reflect positive perceptions of safety climate. Error communication. Young farm workers were asked to rate the extent to which they communicated with their parents about the errors/mistakes they experienced at work. The 4-item error communication scale originally developed by Rybowiak,

304

K. P. Cigularov et al.

Garst, Frese, and Batinic (1999) was slightly modified for the purposes of this study. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used ranging from ‘‘not at all’’ (1) to ‘‘totally’’ (5). Examples of items included: ‘‘If I cannot correct an error at work by myself, I turn to my parents,’’ and ‘‘When I have done something wrong, I ask my parents how I should do it better.’’ High scores suggest that respondents often communicate with their parents about their errors at work. Control variables Two farm characteristics, nature of farm work and farm size, were included in this study as control variables. In comparison to crop farms, livestock farms have been associated with a higher frequency of injuries (Myers & Hendricks, 2001). In addition, larger farms may present more hazards and opportunities to make errors (Pickett, Brison, Neizgoda, & Chipman, 1995). In our study, nature of farm work referred to the largest portion of the gross income from the operation in their farm, which was classified as either crops (e.g. grains and oilseeds, cotton, vegetables and melons, fruits, tree nuts, berries) or livestock (e.g. beef cattle, dairy, hogs, sheep, goats, equine, poultry). Farm size was classified as less than 100 acres or 100 acres or larger. Results The results section consists of three parts. First, we present results from two confirmatory factor analyses on the study variables (i.e. safety locus of control, safety climate, and error communication) that examine the psychometric quality of these scales. Second, descriptive statistics for the study variables are reported. Finally, results of moderated regression analyses are presented. The significance level was set at .05 for all analyses. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the expected threefactor model adequately fitted the data (root mean-square error of approximation  .06 with a 90% confidence interval of .04, .08, standardized root mean-square residual.07, and comparative fit index.91), and all of the factor loadings were significant. We also tested an alternative one-factor model, which conceptualizes that safety locus of control, safety climate, and error communication measure the same underlying construct. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed a poor fit to the data, with root mean-square error of approximation .10 with a 90% confidence interval of .09, .11, standardized root mean-square residual .09, and comparative fit index.73. Furthermore, we examined if the three-factor model statistically outperformed the one-factor model by conducting a nested chi-square difference test. The result suggested that the three-factor model fitted significantly better than the one-factor model (^x2(3, N 231) 116.84). Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas for the study variables are presented in Table 1. Internal safety locus of control and safety climate were significantly related to error communication (r .18 and r.50, respectively), providing support for Hypotheses 1 and 2. To test Hypothesis 3, which posited a moderating effect of safety climate on the relationship between safety locus of control and error communication, a hierarchical regression was conducted in three steps. In the first step, the two control variables

Work & Stress

305

Table 1. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas. Variable

M

1. Nature of farm n.a. worka n.a. 2. Farm sizeb 3. Safety locus of 20.82 controlc 4. Safety climate 17.96 5. Error 15.06 communication

SD

Possible Observed range range

1

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a. 4.25

n.a. 6
30

n.a. 7
30

.11 .09

4.20 3.22

5
25 5
25

5
25 6
20

2

3

4

5

n.a. .03 (.66)

.18** .07 .13 .06

.25** (.71) .18** .50** (.63)

Note: N204
240. Numbers in parentheses are Cronbach’s alphas. n.a.Not applicable. a Farm work related to crops is coded as 1, and farm work related to livestock is coded as 2. b Farm size smaller than 100 acres is coded as 1, and 100 or greater than 100 acres is coded as 2. c Higher scores represent internal safety locus of control. **p B.01.

(i.e. nature of farm work and farm size) significantly accounted for 2.1% of the variance in error communication, R2 .03, F(2, 198) 3.11. In the second step, safety locus of control and safety climate were added to the equation, accounting for additional significant 22% of the variance in error communication, R2 .25, FChange(2, 196) 28.25. Finally, the interaction term was entered in the last step of the regression and significantly predicted error communication, explaining an additional 2% of its variance, R2 .27, FChange(1, 195)4.82. Thus, Hypothesis 3 was also supported. The moderating effect of safety climate on safety locus of control and error communication is shown in Figure 1 with suppressed origin. Furthermore, the results of Step 3 of the regression model, presented in Table 2, revealed that safety locus of control and safety climate significantly predicted error communication after controlling for nature of farm work, farm size, and interaction effects, which were consistent with hypotheses 1 and 2. Discussion This study focused on error communication of young farm workers because prior research has pointed out that open communication about errors at work plays an important role in promoting occupational safety (Hofmann & Mark, 2006). Our results indicated that young farm workers who believed that safety at work was determined by their own actions and behaviour (i.e. internal locus of control) and those who perceived their parents as valuing and emphasizing safety (i.e. positive safety climate) tended to report openly communicating their mistakes at work to their parents. These findings are consistent with previous research, indicating that both individual (e.g. locus of control) and contextual (e.g. safety climate) factors are important for occupational safety (Neal & Griffin, 2004). Even more importantly, in the light of increasing concerns about young workers’ occupational safety and the need to investigate its determinants (Loughlin & Frone, 2004), the current study extends previous occupational safety research to the agricultural context and to the young population of farm workers, which is a vulnerable population with regard to work-related accidents and injuries (Hard et al., 1999; National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2004).

306

K. P. Cigularov et al.

The present study further showed that young farm workers with an external safety locus of control were more likely to share their mistakes at work with their parents when their parents showed concern about safety (i.e. positive safety climate), compared to those with external safety locus of control, who experienced a less positive safety climate. This finding reinforces the view that a positive safety climate may provide a context in which error communication is emphasized and thus counter the adverse effects of external safety locus of control. This is also consistent with person
situation interactionism, which emphasizes the joint effects of individual and situational characteristics on human behaviour and is an enduring theme in personality and social research (Endler & Magnusson, 1976; Schneider, 1983). The present study has several important implications for safety research and practice. First, we demonstrated the applicability and usefulness of managing safety climate in the agricultural context. A positive safety climate provides an additional means to enhance safety communication about mistakes at work, which augments ergonomic designs, technology, and safety regulations. This finding is in line with previous research suggesting that a positive safety climate, shaped by supervisors’ commitment and approach to safety, is related to improved communications about safety and errors (Hofmann & Mark, 2006; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1998). Second, parents can play a critical role, as they are able to influence the establishment of norms for safety practices, procedures, and communications, and thus stimulate or inhibit error communication. Therefore, parent- or managementlevel interventions could be useful in improving the safety climate perceptions and error communication of young farm workers. This is consistent with safety research, suggesting that management actions and behaviour are a key area for intervention in improving safety climate (Zohar & Luria, 2003). Specifically, interventions can be designed for farmers/managers to provide them with opportunities to learn and practice proactive safety management skills, including (a) providing constructive and 18.00

-1 SD Mean Safety Climate +1 SD

Error Communication

17.00

16.00

15.00

14.00

13.00

12.00 External

Internal

Safety Locus of Control

Figure 1. Moderating effect of safety climate on the relationship between safety locus of control and error communication.

Work & Stress

307

Table 2. Moderating effect of safety climate on the relationship between safety locus of control and error communication. SE B

b

r2sp

1.03 0.63

.46 .45

.16* .10

.02 .01

0.42 0.73 0.03 0.35

.42 .40 .05 .05

.06 .12 .04 .46**

.004 .01 .001 .20

0.51 0.68 0.43 0.80 0.02

.42 .40 .19 .21 .01

.08 .11 .62* 1.07** .95*

Variables

B

Step 1 Nature of farm worka Farm sizeb Step 2 Nature of farm work Farm size Safety locus of controlc Safety climate Step 3 Nature of farm work Farm size Safety locus of control Safety climate Safety locus of control Safety climate

R2

^R2

.03

.25

F 3.11*

.22**

.27* .02*

16.11**

14.10**

.01 .01 .02 .05 .02

Note: n201; r2sp squared semi-partial correlation. *pB.05; **pB.01. a,b,c are explained in footnote to Table 1.

timely feedback for improving safety behaviours, (b) giving appropriate recognition for safety behaviours, as well as (c) encouraging workers to share near-misses or mistakes at work and to freely raise safety issues and concerns (Moore, Smith, Cigularov, & Chen, 2008). Constantly demonstrating the farm management’s commitment to safety and its willingness to assume responsibility and solve safety problems is another strategy for cultivating a positive safety climate. This can be achieved through providing clearly defined farm safety goals and policies, providing adequate equipment, providing safety orientation/training to workers, closely monitoring how work is done, and considering safety when setting production speed and schedules. Another important implication of the present finding is the challenge and approach of addressing the belief of ‘‘fatalism’’ in the agricultural industry. It has been shown that farm workers have a tendency to accept danger as part of their job, and believe their injuries are likely to be a result of ‘‘Acts of God’’ or luck (Grieshop et al., 1996). In the present study, young farm workers who didn’t believe that safety outcomes were under their control were more inclined to talk with their parents about the errors they made at work when they perceived a positive safety climate. Otherwise, they would likely not talk about their failures, as depicted in Figure 1. This finding suggests that one way of reducing or countering the belief of fatalism in the agricultural industry may be by building a positive farm safety climate. Limitations Although this study makes significant contributions to our understanding of error communications among young farm workers, it has several potential limitations,

308

K. P. Cigularov et al.

which should be addressed in future research. One limitation is that we cannot make causal inferences from the cross-sectional design employed in this study. Although not optimal, this design has been most commonly used in agricultural safety research and can be useful in studies like ours, which represent initial explorations of constructs of interest (Barling, Loughlin, & Kelloway, 2002). Future longitudinal research would be useful in shedding further light on the links between the studied variables. Our current research design also precluded us from using a multilevel approach in examining the effects of safety climate since we had limited data from more than one individual per farm. Although individual-level analysis has been used in other studies of safety climate (e.g. Gillen et al., 2002; Zohar & Luria, 2003), future studies should attempt to collect data on safety climate perceptions from multiple individuals on a farm to allow for examination of between- and within-farm variance due to farm and individual characteristics, respectively (Zohar, 2003). Farm characteristics, such as farm type (e.g. livestock, crops), could also be examined as predictors in a multilevel model. In addition, an anonymous reviewer raised the issue of possible differential parental influence on youth’s perceptions of safety climate and error communication behaviours. For example, research by Hartos, Eitel, and Simons-Morton (2002) revealed differential parental effects on youths’ driving behaviours. The present study precluded us from examining such differential effects, which remain to be addressed in subsequent studies. Another possible limitation of the current study is the relatively low internal consistency of the scores on the safety locus of control and error communication scales (alphas of .66 and .63, respectively). Scale reduction and adaptation of the original 17-item safety locus of control scale (Jones & Wuebker, 1985) might have affected the internal consistency of the safety locus of control measure used in the current sample. The tendency for internal consistency estimates to decrease as the number of items decreases is well established (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). In fact, if we added one more item to the 5-item measure of safety locus of control, the alpha would have been .70 based on the Spearman-Brown formula. The low internal consistency of the error communication scores in our study is consistent with other research (see Rybowiak et al., 1999). The relatively low internal consistency estimates for the safety locus of control and error communication scales may also be explained by the young age of respondents. Research with personality and attitudinal measures has shown that the younger the respondents the less consistent their responses tend to be, resulting in lower internal consistency estimates (see Hellman, Fuqua, & Worley, 2006). If anything, these low internal consistency reliabilities would have had an attenuating effect in our study, resulting in conservative estimates of the relationships tested in this study. Certainly, further examination of the measurement qualities and performance of these scales and their items with farming populations is needed. Concluding comments Our study represents a first step in understanding how individual and contextual characteristics relate to young farm workers’ willingness to communicate about their errors at work. This study joins a growing body of research that has explored the main and interactive effects of individual and contextual factors on occupational safety (e.g. Barling et al., 2002; Mark et al., 2007; Zohar, 2000) and is especially

Work & Stress

309

relevant to research efforts aiming to identify safety-related problems in agricultural work and offer timely, preventive solutions (e.g. Hawk et al., 1991; Murphy, Kiernan, & Chapman, 1996). Our findings of significant safety climate effects in family-run farms are consistent with previous safety research conducted mainly in large organizations (Neal & Griffin, 2004; Zohar, 2003). They point to the possibility of designing and implementing interventions to target farming populations and suggest that future research should further explore the utility of the safety climate concept in agricultural safety. This was an initial investigation, however, and it is likely that other factors may also influence the extent to which young farm workers engage in error communication. Considering the importance of peer influence on adolescents’ attitudes and behaviour (Brown, Bakken, Ameringer, & Mahon, 2008), future research should also examine the effects of perceptions of peers’ safety attitudes and practices on young farm workers’ communications about errors at work. Furthermore, different combinations of safety climate, safety locus of control, and error communication may have differential effects on different types of injuries (Mark et al., 2007). Thus, researchers should continue to develop and test more comprehensive models to create a more complete picture of the pertinent individual and contextual factors and their interplay and effects on farm safety. Finally, although this study focused on young farm workers, who may be unique in their work experiences, beliefs, and exposures to hazards (Darragh et al., 1998), the relationships studied may also be relevant to young workers in other industries. For example, Westaby and Lowe (2005) found support for the effects of social influence on risk-taking orientation and work-related injuries among a large sample of young people working in a variety of industries, including construction, retail, agriculture, food-service, child-care, home maintenance, and recreation. Thus, future research should directly examine the generalizability of the current findings with samples of young workers in other industries and occupations.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by Grant Number R01/CCR815547 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights (CPWR) as part of a cooperative agreement with the NIOSH (OH008307), as well as Occupational Health Psychology Training, NIOSH (1T42 OH009229-01). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NIOSH, and CPWR.

References Baird, A.A., & Fugelsang, J.A. (2004). The emergence of consequential thought: Evidence from neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 359, 1797
1804. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Barling, J., Loughlin, C., & Kelloway, E.K. (2002). Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 488
496.

310

K. P. Cigularov et al.

Belville, R., Pollack, S.H., Goldbold, J.H., & Landrigan, P.J. (1993). Occupational injuries among working adolescents in New York State. Journal of the American Medical Association, 269, 2754
2759. Biondo, J., & MacDonald, A.P. Jr. (1971). Internal-external locus of control and response to influence attempts. Journal of Personality, 39, 407
419. Brown, B.B., Bakken, J.P., Ameringer, S.W., & Mahon, S.D. (2008). A comprehensive conceptualization of the peer influence process in adolescence. In M.J. Prinstein & K.A. Dodge (Eds.), Understanding peer influence in children and adolescents (pp. 17
44). New York: The Guilford Press. Cigularov, K. ,Chen, P.Y. , &Smith, A. (2008, April). Safety training transfer climate and communication in predicting injury reports. In Grosch J.W. (Ed.), (Chair), Occupation/ industry focused studies of safety climate. Symposium conducted at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Francisco, CA. Christian, M.S., Bradley, J.C., Wallace, J.C., & Burke, M.J. (2009). Workplace safety: A metaanalysis of the roles of person and situation factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1103
1127. Clarke, S. (2006). The relationship between safety climate and safety performance: A metaanalytic review. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 11(4), 315
327. Cotton, P.R. (1997). Improving child safety amid the farm culture. Professional Safety, 42, 18
23. Darragh, A.R., Stallones, L., Sample, P.L., & Sweitzer, K. (1998). Perceptions of farm hazards and personal safety behavior among adolescent farmworkers. Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, 1, 159
169. Dunn, K.A., & Runyan, C.W. (1993). Deaths at work among children and adolescents. American Journal of Diseases of Children, 147, 1044
1047. Elkind, P.D. (2007). Perceptions of risk, stressors, and locus of control influence intentions to practice safety behaviors in agriculture. Journal of Agromedicine, 12, 7
25. Endler, N.S., & Magnusson, D. (1976). Toward an interactional psychology of personality. Psychological Bulletin, 83, 956
974. Frese, M. (1995). Error management in training: Conceptual and empirical results. In C. Zucchermaglio, S. Bagnara & S.U. Stuchy (Eds.), Organizational learning and technological change (pp. 112
124). New York: Springer. Gillen, M., Baltz, D., Gassel, M., Kirsch, L., & Vaccaro, D. (2002). Perceived safety climate, job demands, and coworker support among union and non-union injured construction workers. Journal of Safety Research, 33, 33
51. Glasscock, D.J., Rasmussen, K., Carstensen, O., & Hansen, O.N. (2006). Psychosocial factors and safety behaviour as predictors of accidental work injuries in farming. Work & Stress, 20, 173
189. Grieshop, J.I., Stiles, M.C., & Villanueva, N. (1996). Prevention and resiliency: A cross cultural view of farmworkers’ and farmers’ beliefs about work safety. Human Organization, 55, 25
32. Griffin, M.A., & Neal, A. (2000). Perceptions of safety at work: A framework for linking safety climate to safety performance, knowledge, and motivation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 347
358. Hard, D.L., & Myers, J.R. (2006). Fatal work-related injuries in the agriculture production sector among youth in the United States, 1992
2002. Journal of Agromedicine, 11, 57
65. Hard, D.L., Myers, J.R., Snyder, K.A., Casini, V.J., Morton, L.L., Cianfrocco, R., & Fields, J. (1999). Young workers at risk when working in agricultural production. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 36, 31
33. Hartos, J., Eitel, P., & Simons-Morton, B. (2002). Parenting practices and adolescent risky driving: A three-month prospective study. Health Education and Behavior, 29, 194
206.

Work & Stress

311

Hawk, C., Gay, J., & Donham, K.J. (1991). Rural youth disability prevention project survey: Results from 169 Iowa farm families. Journal of Rural Health, 7, 170
179. Hellman, C.M., Fuqua, D.R., & Worley, J. (2006). A reliability generalization study on the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support: The effects of mean age and number of items on score reliability. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 631
642. Hofmann, D.A., & Mark, B. (2006). An investigation of the relationship between safety climate and medication errors as well as other nurse and patient outcomes. Personnel Psychology, 59, 847
869. Hofmann, D.A., & Morgeson, F.P. (1999). Safety-related behavior as a social exchange: The role of perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 286
296. Hofmann, D.A., & Stetzer, A. (1998). The role of safety climate and communication in accident interpretation: Implications for learning from negative events. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 644
657. Huang, Y.H., Chen, J.C., DeArmond, S., Cigularov, K., & Chen, P.Y. (2007). Roles of safety climate and shift work on perceived injury risk: A multi-level analysis. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 39(6), 1088
1096. Janicak, C.A. (1996). Predicting work accidents with a locus of control based scale and job hazard levels. Psychological Reports, 78, 115
121. Jones, J.W., & Wuebker, L.J. (1985). Development and validation of the safety locus of control scale. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 151
161. Jones, J.W., & Wuebker, L.J. (1993). Safety locus of control and employees’ accidents. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7, 449
457. Lin, S.H., Tang, W.J., Miao, J.Y., Wang, Z.M., & Wang, P.X. (2008). Safety climate measurement at workplace: A validity and reliability assessment. Safety Science, 46, 1037
1046. Loughlin, C., & Frone, M.R. (2004). Young workers’ occupational safety. In J. Barling & M.R. Frone (Eds.), The psychology of workplace safety (pp. 107
126). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Mark, B.A., Hughes, L.C., Belyea, M., Chang, Y., Hofmann, D., Jones, C.B., & Bacon, C.T. (2007). Does safety climate moderate the influence of staffing adequacy and work conditions on nurse injuries? Journal of Safety Research, 38, 431
446. Moore, J.T. ,Smith, A. ,Cigularov, K.P. , &Chen, P.Y. (2008, October). Proactive Management: A Multi-level Communication Intervention in the Construction Industry. Paper presented at the 4th National Occupational Injury Research Symposium, Pittsburgh, PA. Murphy, D.J., Kiernan, N.E., & Chapman, L.J. (1996). An occupational health and safety intervention research agenda for production agriculture: Does safety education work? American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 29, 392
396. Myers, J.R., & Hendricks, K.J. (2001). Injuries among youth on farms in the United States, 1998. Cincinnati, OH: Department of Health and Human Services. National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2004). 2001 childhood agricultural-related injuries. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics Board. Neal, A., & Griffin, M.A. (2004). Safety climate and safety at work. In J. Barling & M.R. Frone (Eds.), The psychology of workplace safety (pp. 15
34). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Ng, T.W.H., Sorensen, K.L., & Eby, L.T. (2006). Locus of control at work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 1057
1087. Nunnally, J.C., & Bernstein, I.H. (1994). Psychometric theory, 3rd ed. New York: McGrawHill. Olson, K.R., & Schellenberg, R.P. (1986). Farm stressors. American Journal of Community Psychology, 14, 555
569.

312

K. P. Cigularov et al.

Pickett, W., Brison, R.J., Neizgoda, H., & Chipman, M.L. (1995). Nonfatal farm injuries in Ontario: A population-based survey. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 27, 425
433. Probst, T.H. (2004). Safety and insecurity: Exploring the moderating effect of organizational safety climate. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 9, 3
10. Reason, J. (1990). Human error. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80, 1
28. Ruser, J.W. (1998). Denominator choice in the calculation of workplace fatality rates. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 33, 151
156. Rybowiak, V., Garst, H., Frese, M., & Batinic, B. (1999). Error orientation questionnaire (EOQ): Reliability, validity, and different language equivalence. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 527
547. Schneider, B. (1983). Interactional psychology and organizational behavior. In L.L. Cummings & B.M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (pp. 1
31). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Smith-Jentsch, K.A., Salas, E., & Brannick, M.T. (2001). To transfer or not to transfer? Investigating the combined effects of trainee characteristics, team leader support, and team climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 279
292. Spector, P.E. (1982). Behavior in organizations as a function of employee’s locus of control. Psychological Bulletin, 91, 482
497. Storms, P.L., & Spector, P.E. (1987). Relationships of organizational frustration with reported behavioral reactions: The moderating effect of locus of control. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 60, 227
234. Westaby, J.D., & Lowe, J.K. (2005). Risk-taking orientation and injury among youth workers: Examining the social influence of supervisors, coworkers, and parents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1027
1035. Witt, A.L. (1989). Person-situation effects in the explanation of self-presentation on the job: Locus of control and psychological climate. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 4, 521
530. Wuebker, L.J. (1986). Safety locus of control as a predictor of industrial accidents and injuries. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1, 19
30. Zohar, D. (1980). Safety climate in industrial organizations: Theoretical and applied implications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 96
102. Zohar, D. (2000). A group-level model of safety climate: Testing the effect of group climate on microaccidents in manufacturing jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 587
596. Zohar, D. (2003). Safety climate: Conceptual and measurement issues. In J.C. Quick & L.E. Tetrick (Eds.), Handbook of occupational health psychology (pp. 123
142). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2003). The use of supervisory practices as leverage to improve safety behavior: A cross-level intervention model. Journal of Safety Research, 34, 567
577.

Copyright of Work & Stress is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.