| In this dissertation, I examined pesticide safety practices in farmworkers and their families to improve understanding of the factors that influence adoption of these behaviors. I approached this research in three ways. First, I utilized cross-sectional data of farmworkers in Eastern Washington to determine the relationships between engagement in pesticide safety practices and farmworkers' demographic, occupational, and worksite characteristics, and their cognitive beliefs. Whether employers provided personal protective equipment was the strongest predictor of using this equipment at work, even after controlling for potential confounders. Occupational characteristics, namely receipt of training in the past five years and handling pesticides at work, predicted increased performance of pesticide safety practices in the home. In addition, perceiving organizational barriers to protecting oneself from pesticides at work was inversely associated with taking precautions in the home.;The second study used two cross-sectional samples of farmworkers in 24 communities in Eastern Washington to evaluate the effectiveness of a community randomized trial in promoting increased adoption of pesticide safety practices in farmworker households. Over time, I observed statistically significant increases in the percent of farmworkers in the intervention communities compared to control communities who reported removing their works shoes before entering the home and changing out of their work clothes within one hour of arriving home. The third study used qualitative methods to better understand the barriers and facilitators to adoption of pesticide safety practices to decrease the take-home pathway through interviews with women in farmworker households with young children. Analysis of these interviews suggests that women's motivation to perform these behaviors was influenced by their knowledge of the take-home pathway and the extent to which they perceived their families as being susceptible to this route of exposure. Five themes illustrate factors that interfered with women's motivations: (1) parental responsibilities, (2) shared behavioral intentions and partner dynamics, (3) beliefs about temperature, (4) issues of control, and (5) community barriers. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings from the three analyses, with particular attention to their relevance to health promotion efforts around this issue. |
