Development and Validation of an Agricultural Safety and Health Literacy Tool.

Background: Health literacy in the workplace plays a crucial role in preventing work-related diseases and injuries. This study aims to develop and validate an instrument to measure Agricultural Safety and Health Literacy (ASHL) based on existing occupational health literacy tools.

Methods: The development of the instrument involved preliminary item development, expert evaluation, and preliminary testing. Cronbach's α, a coefficient that measures the internal consistency of each item, was measured for reliability. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were performed to examine the construct validity, and predictive validity was evaluated using paired t-tests for changes in health literacy before and after education.

Results: The overall Cronbach's α for the instrument was 0.92, indicating high reliability. In the exploratory factor analysis, five factors were extracted explaining 64.4% of the total variance. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, the goodness-of-fit index (GFI) was shown as GFI=0.851, adjusted GFI=0.816, comparative fit index=0.901, normed fit index=0.835, root mean square error of approximation=0.071, and χ²/df=2.2. These results indicated acceptable model fit. The change in score from before to after the educational intervention was confirmed to have predictive validity with a significant increase in all areas (p<0.005).

Conclusion: This study describes the development of an instrument for understanding ASHL for use in evaluating the health and safety of farmers. The developed instrument will be used in Korea to improve the health behavior of farmers and to prevent and manage various health problems that may occur in the agricultural working environment.