The major purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of agricultural machinery safety instruction upon both agricultural machinery safety attitudes and safety knowledge of students enrolled in selected agricultural engineering courses at NCSU. Secondary purposes of the study were to investigate the role of process factor variables in predicting preexisting agricultural machinery safety attitude, and to investigate the relationships between agricultural machinery safety attitudes and school process factor variables following safety instruction.
Data were collected from 127 two-year Agricultural Institute and four-year undergraduate students enrolled in ten course and laboratory sections in the BAE department in the 1992 spring semester. Questionnaire instruments were developed to measure safety attitudes; demographic characteristics; school, home, and work process factor attitude predictor variables; and safety knowledge.
The treatment variable was safety instruction presented to students in five of the ten sections. The effects of instruction were analyzed using a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design. Analysis of covariance was used to interpret posttest attitude scores. Analysis of variance was used to interpret posttest knowledge scores. All statistical tests were performed using a significance level of [alpha] = .05.
Results after two weeks showed that safety instruction had no detectible effect on the students' safety attitudes. The instruction did have a positive influence on the students' safety knowledge. The higher experimental group knowledge mean was significantly different from the control group mean. For the students who received the safety instruction, there was a significant relationship between posttest safety attitudes and knowledge.
The pretest perceptions that students had of their a) instructor's safety attitude, b) instructor's safety knowledge, and c) school laboratory safety environment were all significant in explaining the variations found in preexisting student safety attitudes. A stepwise multiple regression showed that students' perceptions of their instructor's safety knowledge contributed the most to the variability of preexisting student safety attitudes; no other variables significantly increased the coefficient of determination.
It was concluded that safety instruction for university students was effective in increasing their level of safety knowledge. Also, it was concluded that instructors may influence positively the safety attitudes of their students.