Design and test of an online self-report system for agricultural injuries and near-misses

Approximately 100 agricultural workers experience a lost-time injury each day. Current surveillance misses less severe injuries and near-misses and does not provide detailed information that helps prevent injuries. An online self-report system for agricultural injuries and near-misses was created to address limitations of current agricultural injury surveillance. The self-report system was developed and then followed by three rounds of interviews with agricultural workers and agricultural safety and health professionals which guided revisions to the self-report survey and website. During this pilot study, 29 reports were collected and provided insights for the design of the system. In the interviews, subjective satisfaction ratings of the website and survey increased significantly between round 1 and round 3 for both participant groups. Over the 12 months of main data collection, an additional 61 reports were collected online. Of the reports captured, 27% contained near misses and 40% contained injuries requiring no treatment or first aid. The severity of incidents that took place within a year of the reporting date was 0.84 on a scale of 0 to 4, which was 1.8 points lower than incidents that happened more than a year before they were reported. The percent of injuries resulting from tractors and animals was not found to differ between the self-report dataset and the result of a previous study, the Regional Rural Injury Study. The percent of machinery injuries was higher in the RRIS but not significantly. For many body parts, including head, eyes, arms, and injuries to other/unspecified parts of the body, there was not a significant difference between the self-report and the results of the National Agricultural Workers Survey, an agricultural injury survey of US crop workers conducted by the US Department of Labor. The percent of torso injuries was significantly lower in the self-report data. While the reporting rate of 1.17 reports per week was lower than the goal of 10 reports per week, the number of page views was 172 per week which is similar to the view rates of local blogs and several established agricultural safety and health websites. Additionally, Facebook targeted advertisements resulted in one additional report for every $7.75 spent. While the number of reports was lower than the goal, there is evidence that self-report may be a viable method for collecting detailed agricultural injury reports. This research represents an important first step towards online agricultural injury surveillance on a larger scale, which in turn will lead to better interventions and a reduction in injuries and fatalities.