Program Scoring and Rationale - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 147

BOX 10-2
Scale for Rating Program Impact
5 = Research program has made a major contribution to worker health and safety on the
basis of end outcomes or well-accepted intermediate outcomes.
4 = Research program has made a moderate contribution on the basis of end outcomes
or well-accepted intermediate outcomes; research program generated important new
knowledge and is engaged in transfer activities, but well-accepted intermediate out-
comes or end outcomes have not been documented.
3 = Research program activities or outputs are going on and are likely to produce improve-
ments in worker health and safety (with explanation of why not rated higher).
2 = Research program activities or outputs are going on and may result in new knowledge
or technology, but only limited application is expected.
1 = Research activities and outputs are NOT likely to have any application.
NA = Impact cannot be assessed; program not mature enough.
forestry and fishing. In contrast with other NIOSH programs that focus research
on narrow sectors and well-defined problems, the AFF Program has the task of ad-
dressing manifold issues that affect the occupational safety and health of nearly all
natural resource workers on land and sea. That task touches on more than a million
businesses, a huge array of products, and multiple workplace exposure. NIOSH
non-sector based programs address extremely narrow topics and can focus good
science on well-defined problems, whereas the AFF Program is expected to spread
its resources to address broad issues, so it is difficult to conduct research on all of
them. In agriculture, the AFF Program responded in a reasonably effective manner
to the extreme diversity that characterizes agricultural production in the United
States. The extensive sectoral, technical, and geographic diversity of the agricultural
industry left NIOSH with no alternative but to focus on key subjects.
Focused Research Areas
Despite those enormous challenges, the AFF Program has proved that it is able
to conduct sound research on focused areas when given the opportunity. That is
the case with the Alaska commercial fishing program (see Box 10-3), which is an
exemplary research program with concentrated research topics, clear goals, and
adequate resources. Several factors contributed to the success of the well-executed
program: research that was focused and targeted, use of clear and consistent sur-