[Federal Register Volume 68, Number 116 (Tuesday, June 17, 2003)]
[Notices]
[Pages 35895-35896]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 03-15215]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

[30 DAY-47-03]


Agency Forms Undergoing Paperwork Reduction Act Review

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes a 
list of information collection requests under review by the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) in compliance with the Paperwork Reduction 
Act (44 U.S.C. chapter 35). To request a copy of these requests, call 
the CDC Reports Clearance Officer at (404) 498-1210. Send written 
comments to CDC, Desk Officer, Human Resources and Housing Branch, New 
Executive Office Building, Room 10235, Washington, DC 20503 or by fax 
to (202) 395-6974. Written comments should be received within 30 days 
of this notice.

Proposed Project

    A Research Program to Develop Optimal NIOSH Alerts in Farming (OMB 
No. 0920-0501)--REVISION--National Institute for Occupational Safety 
and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
    The mission of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and 
Health (NIOSH) is to promote ``safety and health at work for all people 
through research and prevention.'' Alerts are some of the primary 
publications by which NIOSH communicates health and safety 
recommendations to at-risk workers. Each Alert is mailed to workers 
affected by a particular health or safety hazard and contains 
information about the nature of the hazard, as well as recommendations 
for avoiding or controlling it. Despite the important role of Alerts in 
conveying health and safety information to workers, these publications 
have not been routinely pretested and evaluated for effectiveness. 
Therefore, it is important to continue research that examines the 
degree to which the NIOSH Alerts produce risk awareness, as well as 
comprehension, acceptance and use of the recommended health and safety 
measures.
    The OMB-approved project, ``A Research Program to Develop Optimal 
NIOSH Alerts in Farming'' (0920-0501), applied theoretical advances in 
communication research to the development of NIOSH Alerts to ensure 
maximal effectiveness in conveying health and safety information to 
workers. This project applied psychology and communication theories to 
experimentally manipulate features of the NIOSH Alerts and examine the 
effects of these manipulations on the effectiveness of the Alert. To 
design these theory-based Alerts, the concepts of goal attainment 
imagery and risk imagery were applied. Goal attainment imagery asks the 
readers to imagine themselves carrying out the safety recommendations 
provided in the Alert, while risk imagery asks the readers to imagine 
themselves in a high risk situation where the safety recommendations 
are not followed.
    Field research from the project, which applied these two types of 
imagery, has shown that farmers who received an Alert containing goal 
attainment imagery found the Alert easier to visualize, stronger, more 
convincing and more attention getting than a standard Alert. Farmers 
who received an Alert with goal attainment imagery reported heightened 
perceptions of risk awareness and more positive attitudes toward 
engaging in safety recommendations. In addition, they reported that 
they would be more likely to pass the information on to other farmers. 
No differences were found between farmers who received Alerts 
containing risk imagery and farmers who received a standard Alert. 
Therefore, goal attainment imagery seemed to have the strongest effect 
when included in the Alerts.
    The original OMB-approved protocol proposed that a national mail-
out survey would be conducted in order to test the generalizability of 
the data collected in the field. Farmers would receive an experimental 
(high imagery) or a standard version of an Alert along with a survey to 
complete and return to NIOSH. However, based on results from similar 
projects, we have learned that mail surveys generate low response 
rates. We propose changing the data collection format from a mail 
survey to a telephone survey. Farmers would receive an experimental 
version of the Alert and then be contacted approximately two weeks 
later to complete a telephone survey.
    This change to the data collection format would serve three 
purposes. It is expected that the response rate for the telephone 
survey would be considerably higher than the response rate for the mail 
survey. Also, surveying a national sample of farmers would allow us to 
generalize the results to the broader population of farmers. Finally, 
the distribution of the experimental Alerts is similar to the way in 
which NIOSH Alerts are distributed to at risk workers and would present 
an opportunity to test the effectiveness of this distribution method. 
The annual burden for this data collection is 133 hours.

[[Page 35896]]



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                                                                                     Number of    Average burden
                           Respondent                                Number of     responses per   per response
                                                                    respondents     respondent      (in hours)
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Farmers.........................................................            400               1           20/60
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    Dated: June 11, 2003.
Thomas A. Bartenfeld,
Acting Associate Director for Policy, Planning and Evaluation, Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention.
[FR Doc. 03-15215 Filed 6-16-03; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4163-18-P