Farm safety day camps are offered in hundreds of communities across the country as a format for teaching children safe methods of play and age-appropriate work on farms and ranches. There has been little research, however, to evaluate the effectiveness of these one-day community-initiated events. The proposed project involves an evaluation of the Progressive Farmer Farm Safety Day Camp Program, a national program, with approximately 250 camps offered in 37 states this year. With the changes in agriculture toward the end of the 20th century, many groups lost the statewide safety specialists and/or programming efforts that had previously supported farm safety day camp organizers. However, this shift at the state level did not reduce the desire by local communities to conduct day camps to educate both farm and non-farm children about the dangers involved in living on and visiting farms. To help meet this need, the Progressive Farmer Farm Safety Day Camp program was begun in 1995 to provide nationwide support for interested individuals and groups. The program was designed to meet the needs of local community members who want to help children in their area stay safe. It provides training, resources, support, and networking opportunities needed to conduct a camp that provides age-appropriate, effective lessons in topics related to farm safety. While providing such support on a nationwide scale, the program is specifically designed to be community-based, as each camp is planned and conducted at the local level, pairing the support and materials provided by Progressive Farmer with support provided by local individuals and organizations. Camp process evaluation will consist of surveys completed by the camp coordinators and volunteers, reporting data for their camp, including attendance, curriculum components used, assessments of success, and suggestions for improvements. The process evaluation will involve all camps offered from March 2002 through October 2002. From the camp coordinators, an Evaluation Advisory Group will be formed to assist with plans for conducting the evaluation and with plans for dissemination of the results back to the communities that participate. Outcomes will be evaluated using a sample of 30 camps and their surrounding communities. Pre-test, post-test, three-month follow-up, and one-year follow-up surveys will be administered to assess knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of children, ages 8-13 who attend Progressive Farmer day camps and a comparison group of children in the same communities who do not attend camp. Impact of the camps will also be evaluated by asking about farm-related injuries in the pre-test, three-month, and one-year follow-up surveys. In addition to testing for changes among campers across time, and testing for differences between campers and non-campers, a comparison will be made between two types of camps: (a) community-wide day camps and (b) school-based day camps or programs.
| McCallum, Debra Moehle; Murphy, Shannon; Reed, Deborah B et al. (2013) What we know about the effectiveness of farm safety day programs and what we need to know. J Rural Health 29:20-9 |
| McCallum, D M; Conaway, M B; Reynolds, S J (2009) Evaluation of a farm safety day program: participants and non-participants over a one-year follow-up period. J Agric Saf Health 15:255-71 |
