Development of Scale for Assessing Occupational Health Hazards in Post Harvest Activities (OHHPA Scale)

Agriculture is the oldest and most important primary occupation compared to other occupations (Kumar and Ratnakar in Indian Res J Extension Educ 11(1):109–112, 2011 [3]). In Assam, more than 70% of farm women are involved in post harvest activities such as threshing, sun-drying, sieving, winnowing, cleaning, seed selection and storage of grains. Post harvest activities are performed by utilizing manual labour and farm women are exposed to variety of health hazards. An attempt was undertaken to develop a scale for assessing occupational health hazards in post harvest activities (OHHPA scale). Survey method was conducted on three hundred farm women of six different villages of Jorhat district, Assam. Women samples were selected at three stages viz—60 respondents for item analysis and testing reliability and 300 women samples for administering the developed scale. Personal and demographic characteristics of the respondents revealed that 100% were literate and two third of the respondents belonged to nuclear families. Eighty two per cent of the respondents were marginal farmers who have 1 acre of land for paddy cultivation. Majority of the respondents (88%) were in the age group of 30–40 years. Biological, physical, accidental and environmental hazards were common among Assamese farm women except chemical hazards. Respondents in the ‘high’ incidences category was found to be more than 38% who were suffering from all types of hazards where as ‘severe’ incidences category were nil in the study area. The findings also showed that 58% respondents were in the category of ‘high’ incidence of hazards in post harvest activities.