Henry P. Cole

1
Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches to Farm
Community Safety Education

• Henry P. Cole
• University of Kentucky
• Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and
• Injury Prevention
• Paper presented at the An Agricultural Safety
  and Health Conference
• Using Past and Present to Map the Future
• Baltimore, Maryland, February 2 - 4, 2001

2
An educational problem

• educational programs for delivering this farm
  health and safety knowledge are low in number
  and often of questionable effect. (Agriculture
  at Risk ,1989. p. 5)
• It often seems as though relatively little has
  been accomplished through the years with safety
  and health education in production agriculture.
  the nature of production agriculture, and current
  social, political, and economic realities,
  suggest that safety and health education will
  remain a favored methodology for the foreseeable
  future. Murphy, 1992, p. 144.)

3
Enforcement has its problems too

• many production agriculture safety and health
  regulations directed toward individual behavior
  are nothing more than educational behavioral
  guidelines. (p. 167)
• These instructions ignore individual working
  contingencies that influence actual behavior by
  individuals in specific situations. (p. 167)
• Attention, then, must be focused on the question
  of how safety and health education might do a
  better job for production agriculture. (pp.
  144-145)

4
Three theories of learning

• Behaviorism habits - 1900 to 1960
• Learning as response strengthening
• Constructivism - 1960 to 1990
• Learning as acquiring and organizing information
• Socioculturalism - 1970 - present
• Learning is situated in the practice and tools of
  social groups working together on everyday task,
  sometimes called JPF learning

5
The A, B, C model

• Antecedents - things people can see, hear, feel
  remember that cue a particular behavior
• Behavior - actions exhibited in the presence of
  antecedent stimuli
• Consequences - outcomes or effects of behavior
  (behaviors that result in desirable outcomes are
  said to be reinforced and become habits)
• A B C

6
Two tales about the A-B-C model

• The man who ate too many donuts
• Short term and long term reinforcers
• Competition among reinforcers
• Why fear of punishment usually fails
• The farmer who ran his equipment without shields
  (machine guards)

7
What maintains safety behavior?

• Driving a tractor with a ROPS and wearing the
  seat belt is very rarely reinforced by being
  protected during an overturn.
• What, then, reinforces a farmer for always
  driving a ROPS-equipped tractor and always
  wearing the seat belt?
• Is it fear of injury? (No it is not!)

8
Information processing theory

• The computer metaphor - human brains are like
  computers, they receive, process, store, organize
  and act on information.
• Constructivism - Humans unlike computers receive,
  manipulate, and use information to construct
  meaning and to create knowledge and purpose.

9
Theory of reasoned action

• Social psychological theories like these are
  information processing theories. They describe
  how beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, motivations,
  and perceptions of others values result in
  intentions and behaviors. The focus on what goes
  on inside a persons head.

10
The EPPM model

• An information processing model that describe how
  people process fear messages and either act to
  avoid the threat or deny the threat. The choice
  is determined by the persons
• Perception of his or her
• Susceptibility to the injury
• The severity of the injury
• The persons belief in
• His or her self efficacy (ability to control
  outcomes)
• Response efficacy (effectiveness of the
  recommended method for reducing risk and severity
  of injury)
• Example How farmers deal with news about
  tractor overturn fatalities and injuries

11
Socioculturalism

• Learning occurs in the practice of just plain
  folks engaged in the ordinary task of life and
  work where each person has a legitimate role and
  contribution in shared common goals
• Originated in studies of the real-world social
  cooperative practices of trades and professionals
  and how they create and use knowledge effectively

12
Instructional approach

• Educators can best support worker actions by
  working within their organizations to develop
  institutional structures which can respond to
  issues identified...
• efforts to increase commitment to
  organizational safety should be oriented from
  within communities of practice by actions that
  personally involve their members and make safety
  a part of their professionalism, not an
  obligation imposed from outside.

13
An important question

• Where do safety beliefs, attitudes, knowledge,
  behavior and strategies reside?
• Three Answers
• Behaviorists - in individuals habitual behaviors
  (forget about attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge)
• Constructivists - in individuals heads as
  organized beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, skills,
  and strategies
• Socioculuralists - in the communal everyday
  practices of just plain folks and their tools as
  they engage in purposeful social efforts in which
  each member has a legitimate role and contribution

14
Stories to live by An integration
15
A case example

• This farmer drove an average of three times a
  day, 20 days per month for 25 years and never had
  an overturn during 18,000 tractor driving events.
  He knows people who died in overturns. He
  believes that in an overturn a ROPS and a seat
  belt provide great protection. But he says, ROPS
  are not worth the cost and effort.

16
The overturn event
During his 26th year of farming the farmer
overturns his tractor and becomes a paraplegic.
Thereafter he insists that his tractors be fitted
with ROPS and seat belts to protect his wife and
other family members.
17
Interpretations of his behavior

• Behavioristic - he was reinforced for driving
  tractors without ROPS and seat belts
• Constructivist - he constructed meaningful
  representations of the relative risk of overturns
  and his ability to prevent these events
• Socioculturalist - the culture tales in his
  community presented stories that he lived by (and
  nearly died by too).

18
Another case

• Many habits, conceptions and culture tales in
  farm communities promote the virtues of child
  second riders.
• Few address the risks and consequences

19
Another death

• When child second riders fall from tractors and
  die, how are these events usually treated in
  local rural newspapers and why?
• What is required to change these culture tales
  and who must do so?