Supplemental Document Responses

Supplemental Document-- Responses to OMB’S Questions --0920-NEW: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Occupational Safety and Health Program Elements in the Wholesale Retail Sector

Programs’s responses (in red), are embedded in questions below:

OMB has the following questions based on initial review of this ICR:

• Supporting Statement A indicates that data collection for this ICR is primarily conducted online.  Would you please ask the Program for screenshots of the instruments?

Please see attached.

Also, because the ICR plans to allow for paper-based and telephone completion of the survey instrument if the respondent does not wish to complete the online version, there should be a paragraph that discusses how comparable the data collected by different modes will be and how the differences in collection format will be accounted for during analysis.

• In prior research Amick and colleagues have found no differences in mode of administration (see Amick 2003).  The primary goal of allowing multiple modes of administration is to reduce respondent burden and increase participation rates.  However, we will explore effect differences in mode of administration from two perspectives.  First, we will consider if the response patterns to the organizational policies and practices questions and then if the injury and illness rates vary by mode.  If we find no differences then all the data will be pooled.  If we find differences, then the differences will be described and in all multivariable analyses an indicator variable for mode of administration will be used to adjust for variability in mode of administration.

• Who at OSHA has reviewed the ICR and instruments?

OSHA has not been directly involved in the development of this work.  Dr. Amick has briefed OSHA staff on the project.  He is working with OSHA on the assessment of the psychometric properties of the OSHA Form 33 in parallel to his work with NIOSH.  In the OSHA  research, Dr. Amick is working to shorten the Form 33 without losing any information to reduce the burden.

Supporting Statement A states that, “The study is designed to determine the effectiveness of particular OSH program elements in reducing workers compensation (WC) injury/ illness outcomes.”  How is the data on WC injury/illness outcomes being obtained? Part B seems to indicate (page 6) that the data will be collected from participating firms, however there does not appear to be an IC or burden attributed to this activity.  Please clarify.

The WC injury/illness outcome data are being obtained from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation as part of the ongoing partnership with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. This data collection does not burden the participating firms involved and is not part of the current ICR.

Part B seems to indicate that there is a separate “organizational questionnaire” (page 5) for the nested sample.  Please ask the Program to provide this questionnaire (it is not currently included in the IC section).

The questionnaire for the nested sample is the same questionnaire used in the 1^st year survey, which has already been provided.