Farm safety attitudes and accident involvement

Many safety educators firmly believe that good safety attitudes are a must if people are to avoid accidents in the workplace and elsewhere. This idea has evolved mainly from the industrial safety movement and has been adopted in most fields of safety. However, this fundamental adage has never been tested in agriculture. A random sample of Pennsylvania farmers were asked their attitudes toward nationally recognized farm safety concepts. The Semantic Differential Attitude Test was the instrument used to collect the data. Four hundred and ninety-three respondents indicated they have about the same attitudes toward farm safety concepts regardless of their accident involvement and regardless of other variables studied. The results of this study suggest that the apparent high priority given to safety attitude development as a primary means of accident prevention should be re-examined.