Impact of long farm working hours on child safety practices in agricultural settings.

Objectives: To characterize working hours of adult farm owner-operators and their spouses by season, and to examine associations between working hours and farm safety practices affecting children.

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data collected as part of an existing study of injury and its determinants.

Results: Owner-operators reported a median of 60 to 70 hours of farm work per week during warm weather months, with declines in hours over the winter.

Relationship between sleep loss and economic worry among farmers: a survery of 94 active saskatchewan noncorporate farms.

Farm work involves seasonal peak busy periods with long hours of work and potential sleep loss. Social, technological, and economic changes, and depressed commodity prices, have resulted in financial stress. There may be a relationship between sleep loss and worry about economic conditions.

The Saskatchewan Farm Injury Cohort: rationale and methodology.

The Saskatchewan Farm Injury Cohort (SFIC) is a major new Canadian study that was developed to evaluate potential causes of injury among farmers and their family members. The cohort involves 2,390 farms and 5,492 farm people being followed over a two-year period. The article describes the rationale and methodology for the baseline and longitudinal components of this study.

Application of novel communication technologies to the study of farm families: a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate the efficacy of three different communication technologies for collection of health outcomes from farm households.

Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted in central Saskatchewan, Canada in 2006. The 94 farms completing the baseline questionnaire were randomly assigned to follow-up by regular mail (n=30), computer telephony (n=32), or their choice of regular mail, computer telephony, or e-mail follow-up (n=32).