Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #105732

Larry J. Chapman, PhD, Kathryn M. Pereira, MS, and Astrid N. Newenhouse, PhD. Biological Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin, 460 Henry Mall, Madison, WI 53706, 608.262.1054, ljchapma@wisc.edu

Purpose: We intervened to reduce work hazards in the high injury dairy industry by promoting three safer work practices: barn lights, bag silos, and calf care improvements. Methods: We relied on theory about how and why individuals adopt innovations to guide our intervention's conceptualization of: 1) How managers adopted (through a sequence of actions from knowledge to persuasion to decision to implementation to confirmation: Everett Roger's diffusion theory model of sequential stages). 2) How information communications moved in multiple stages (research to media to intermediaries to managers: Roger's multistage model of communication flows). Theory also informed our intervention's methods as they pertained to: 3) Why we promoted work practices that were more profitable as well as safer than traditional practices (production theory in standard economics). 4) Why we utilized information sources that most managers already used and trusted to minimize the cost of information access (social marketing theory). Finally, our evaluation used Carolyn Weiss's conceptual mapping to make explicit links between theory and outcome data. Results and Conclusions: Annual mail questionnaires to rolling 7-10% samples of the 4,300 managers we targeted showed, after seven years compared to baseline, that dairy managers reported more exposure to intervention materials and promotion activities about two of the three practices, greater awareness of two, and greater adoption of all three. These results provide evidence that theory-driven interventions that improve information flow and interpersonal communication can be associated with rapid, widespread adoption of safer work practices. NIOSH support: U05CCU506065, U06CCU512940, R01CCR514357, R01OHO3953.

Learning Objectives:

• After attending this presentation, most audience members will be able to describe three or more of the five stages in diffusion theory’s model of the innovation decision process (i.e. knowledge or awareness, persuasion or consideration, decision or adoption, implementation, confirmation).
• After attending this presentation, most audience members will be able to describe a single example of diffusion theory’s multistage model of communication flows (i.e. mass media information to opinion leaders then opinion leader information and persuasion to followers).

Keywords: Agricultural Work Safety, Adoption

Related Web page: http:://www.bse.wisc.edu/hfhp

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.