Safe Farm: The Impact of an Iowa Public Information Campaign

The 1992 public information campaign, Safe Farm, made farm safety messages available to a diverse and independent target audience of 104,000 full-time and parttime Iowa farm operators and their families. The print portion of the campaign reached 5.03 million Iowa newspaper subscribers. A series of public service announcements received at least 180 h of air time on more than 100 Iowa radio stations and nearly 80,000 farm safety publications were distributed by Iowa State University (ISU) Extension during the campaign. The impact of this public information campaign was measured by a baseline and follow-up telephone survey of 460 Iowa farm operators. The baseline survey showed that farm operators relied heavily on local media for farm safety information, as well as the cooperative extension service. When asked where they obtained safety information, 95% of the respondents said newspapers and magazines, 82% radio, 77% television, 59% relied on publications from ISU Extension, and 33% relied on ISU Extension staff. The follow-up survey measured significant improvements in Iowa farm operators’ awareness, concern, and behavior based on three indices composed of scales common to both surveys. A multiple regression analysis was conducted based on a causal model. The multivariate test indicated that these changes could not be statistically attributed to the