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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Occupational Safety and Health Administration |
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| Evaluation of the Voluntary Protection Program Findings Report  September
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Alison Simon, Ph.D. Jim Wells, Ph.D. Sameer Abraham, Ph.D. September 29, 2005 The Gallup Organization Government Division 901 F St. NW Washington, D.C. 20004 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction 2.0 Methodology
3.2 Specifics About Recent Mentoring Experiences
4.2 Specific Outreach Activities Conducted at the Request of OSHA
6.2 Outreach Program - Conclusions 6.3 Data Analysis - Conclusions 6.4 Recommendations for Future Data Collection Efforts Appendix A: Equations For Mentoring and Outreach Appendix B: Web Questionnaire Appendix C: Invitation Letter Appendix D: Call Script Used for Reminder Calls Appendix E: Full Data Tables Appendix F: Data Analysis Plan Table of Tables Year of acceptance SIC division Size of site Did anyone at your site conduct mentoring in the past 12 months Mentors per site Years your site had at least one person mentoring Sites that no longer mentor by tenure in VPP Number of sites mentored over time Average # of facilities mentored since acceptance into VPP Average # of facilities mentored that were subsequently accepted into VPP SIC Division – number of respondents Mean number of sites mentored since inception Since your site was approved for VPP, on average how many sites have you mentored – by number of employees Does your company require you to mentor facilities within your own company Do you conduct mentoring with non-VPP bound sites Yearly hours spent mentoring What type of mentoring do you conduct Does your site plan to do more, less, or about the same amount of mentoring in the future Additional hours willing to mentor Did anyone at your site perform outreach activities in the past 12 months (either OSHA or for other organizations) Number of years conducting outreach activities Number of employees performing outreach Which outreach activities did you conduct in the past 12 months Type of hours spent on event Gallup’s estimate of activity in calendar year 2004 Percentage of activities conducted within own company Would you do more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities in the next 3 years Additional hours sites are willing to spend Companies conducting outreach at the request of OSHA Outreach conducted at the request of OSHA by manufacturing sites Breakdown by employee size Outreach conducted at the request of OSHA by employee size How many times was the activity conducted in 2004 Number of activities conducted overall Gallup’s estimate of activity Percentage of activities conducted within own company Would you do more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities in the next 3 years Additional hours sites are willing to spend Outreach conducted at the request of other organizations by manufacturing sites Breakdown by employee size Outreach conducted at the request of other organizations by employee size TCIR and DART rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP Changes in TCIR and DART rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP TCIR rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP by employee size of site DART rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP by employee size of site TCIR rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP by SIC code DART rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP by SIC code Years prior to acceptance List of events or activities and number of respondents indicating event occurred Average number of yearly diseases by years out from VPP acceptance Future TCIR and DART rates DART rates of acceptance TCIR rates after acceptance 1.0 INTRODUCTION In November 2003, Gallup was contracted by the U.S. Department of Labor to design an evaluation of the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) — cooperative programs that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) uses to recognize employers who demonstrate excellent voluntary safety and health programs. Over the ensuing year and a half, the Gallup and OSHA project teams worked in conjunction to establish an evaluation that would accomplish the following objectives:
2.0 METHODOLOGY To perform this analysis, two distinct methodologies were used. One was a Web questionnaire to gather data for the first two objectives, measuring outreach and mentoring and measuring injury and illness reductions, and the other was a paper questionnaire for the third objective, the feasibility analysis. All federal VPP participants were eligible for the Web questionnaire; OSHA invited all Web questionnaire participants to participate in the feasibility analysis and forwarded potential participants to Gallup. This report focuses solely on the Web questionnaire data. Final results from the feasibility analysis are in a follow-up report. In total, OSHA provided a population of 834 names and addresses of current federal VPP sites for the Web questionnaire. Of those 834 eligible respondents, 283 completed the questionnaire and an additional 97 partially completed the questionnaire for a questionnaire response rate of 46%. Due to the nature of this questionnaire (divided into three non-contiguous sections) it was determined that a partially completed questionnaire would be acceptable. In addition, as of the December 31, 2004, OSHA had 1,107 federal sites in their database. For extrapolation calculations contained within this document, the 1,107 federal sites are used. For the Web questionnaire, invitation letters with access codes were sent to eligible respondents on February 28, 2005 (see Appendix B). Data collection occurred between March 1 through May 27, 2005. Gallup conducted reminder phone calls 10 days after respondents received their invitations, from March 11 through March 18 (see Appendix B for reminder call script). OSHA conducted reminder calls on numerous occasions in April and May. 2.1 Respondent Characteristics Respondents for this questionnaire were representative of the entire federal VPP population in many respects. Overall, the majority of respondents were new entrants into VPP and were mainly in the manufacturing sector. Characteristics of these sites including number of years in VPP, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, and number of employees were as follows:
3.0 MENTORING EFFORTS 3.1 The Overall Impact of Mentoring Respondents were first asked about the mentoring activities that they (and their own company) had conducted. Mentoring is one-on-one assistance from a VPP participant to a prospective participant, either within or outside of a particular organization, to help the organization improve its safety and health management systems, prepare an application for VPP, or prepare for an onsite evaluation by OSHA. NOTE: In most questions asked, at least one "outlier" was found. For these purposes, an "outlier" is considered to be any data point more than two standard deviations from the mean." When a listing of data are presented, all data, including outliers, are shown. However, for purposes of statistical analysis, outliers were eliminated. Outliers throughout this document are indicated by an asterisk "*". Of the 338 respondents who answered the question, 69% said they had conducted some mentoring activities in the past 12 months.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Did Anyone at Your Site Conduct Mentoring in the Past 12 Months Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
Question asked: Did you or anyone at your site perform any mentoring activities related to the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) in the one-year period from January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004 either within or outside your company? From there, respondents were asked specifics about their current mentoring activities.
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Mentors / Site Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 5 - One bar for each mentor range showing the number of mentors Values:
mean=2.85 mentors/site Question asked: How many people at your site, including yourself, performed mentoring activities related to VPP in the one-year period from January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004 either within or outside your company? (see full data table in Appendix C)
Finally, a last question asked the number of years the respondent’s site had been mentoring.
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Years Your Site Had at Least One Person Mentoring Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 5 - One bar for each year range showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
mean=2.6 years/site Question asked: Since your site was approved for VPP, how many years has your site had at least one person conducting mentoring either within or outside of your company? (see full data table in Appendix C) Of the 335 sites that said they have performed mentoring in the past, 51 sites, or 15%, said they used to conduct mentoring, but no longer do. This indicates that since inception, the VPP has lost approximately 15% of its mentors. Looking closer at those 51 sites, 44 of them provided their date of acceptance into VPP and we can see that one-half (50%) were in VPP between 5 and 10 years.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Sites That No Longer Mentor by Tenure in VPP Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each year range showing the number of sites Values:
NOTE: This includes mentoring both inside and outside a site’s company. Corresponding to the recent influx of mentors, the majority of mentoring sites have mentored a few sites each. Over two-thirds, 66%, have mentored less than five sites since their approval into the VPP program. Dropping the outlier, the average site has mentored 1.19 facilities since its inception into VPP.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Number of Sites Mentored Over Time Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each site range showing the number mentored Values:
Question asked: Since your site was approved for VPP, approximately how many facilities has your VPP site mentored either within or outside of your own company? It is also worth considering the amount of mentoring being undertaken by length of tenure with VPP. Gallup divided length of tenure with VPP into four categories: under 3 years, 3 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, and over 10 years.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Average # of Facilities Mentored Since Acceptance Into VPP Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each year range and sites showing the Average number of facilities mentored Values:
NOTE: This includes mentoring both inside and outside a site’s company. As the graph above shows, the longer a site is in VPP, the more facilities it is likely to mentor. However, there appears to be a drop-off rate over time (or a decreasing rate of return) such that older sites tend to mentor fewer facilities as they age with the program — it appears that over time, enthusiasm for mentoring may wane among participants. Respondents were next asked how many of those sites they mentored had been accepted into VPP subsequent to their mentoring activities (excluding the outlier). Of the 1,295 sites reported to have been mentored over time, 593 were accepted into VPP for a 46% acceptance rate.
When considered by tenure, it is also the case that the longer a site has been in VPP, the more facilities it mentored are accepted into VPP.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Average # of Facilities Mentored Who Were Subsequently Accepted into VPP Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each year range showing the Average number of sites mentored Values:
NOTE: This includes mentoring both inside and outside a site’s company. Mentoring was considered next by industry type in response to asking the question, "Does mentoring differ by SIC code?" Because of the array of SIC codes indicating industry type, Gallup divided the SIC codes into the 10 SIC divisions. Respondents for this questionnaire fell into the following divisions:
By SIC division, there is sufficient sample to complete an analysis for Manufacturing, Transportation/ Communications/Electric/Gas/Sanitary Services, and Services. To conduct the analysis by industry, Gallup held tenure constant so that the length of time with VPP would not be a factor. Based on these three divisions, it appears that sites in the manufacturing division conduct fewer mentoring activities than do those in the other two divisions. Manufacturing VPP sites, over time, mentored an average of 3.4 sites while services VPP sites mentored an average of 6.1 sites.
The number of sites mentored was also considered by the number of employees at the site. Since Gallup did not have the exact number of current employees at a site, a proxy was used — the number of employees at a given site the year they were approved into VPP.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Since Your Site Was Approved for VPP on Average How Many Sites Have You Mentored? by Number of Employees Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each employee range showing the Average number of sites mentored Values:
Question asked: Since your site was approved for VPP, approximately how many facilities has your VPP site mentored either within or outside of our own company? It appears that the larger a site is, the more mentoring it is practicing. 3.2 Specifics About Recent Mentoring Experiences The next series of questions asked respondents about specific mentoring experiences over the past year (2004). Respondents were asked three questions about their most recent mentoring experiences: 1) Name of the site they mentored, 2) Number of employees working at that site, and 3) If the facility was inside or outside their own company. Respondents reported they had mentored 544 sites in 2004. For these 544 sites, respondents noted there were a total of 181,784 employees working at those sites for an average of 334 employees being mentored per site.
If we first extrapolate the number of sites from the 544 to the entire population, we estimate that 1,584 sites were mentored in some capacity in 2004.
Respondents were asked if they were required to do mentoring within their own companies. Almost one-third (29%) said yes, they were required to perform mentoring activities internally.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Does Your Company Require You To Mentor Facilities Within Your Own Company? Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
Question asked: Does your company require you or others at your site to mentor facilities within your company? The next set of questions asked mentors how much mentoring they did for sites that were not focused on acceptance into the VPP.
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Do You Conduct Mentoring with Non-VPP Bound Sites? Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
Question asked: Does your site perform any mentoring activities with facilities both within and outside your company that are not working towards approval into the VPP, for example, facilities that just want advice on improving the safety and health of their worksites? The question was followed up with an hourly estimate. The following chart compares the mentoring activities and how those respondents who conduct mentoring reported the number of hours spent per year conducting each of the activities. When asked about the hours they spent on each of these activities, respondents reported spending 6.7 hours per month/80.8 hours per year mentoring OUTSIDE their company sites, and 8.9 hours per month/106.7 hours per year mentoring INSIDE their company.
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Yearly Hours Spent on Mentoring Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 2 - One bar for each area time is spent showing the yearly hours Values:
Among those conducting mentoring with non-VPP bound sites, the average amount of time spent was approximately 30 hours per year (n=163 sites). The next section analyzed whether those who were conducting the mentoring were overlapping and conducting both internal and external mentoring. Were those who were conducting mentoring doing it with both internal and external sites or just one type of site? It turns out, about one-half were mentoring both internal and external sites whereas the other half were mentoring one type.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: What Type of Mentoring Do You Conduct? Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each mentoring type showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
A final set of questions asked respondents about the quantity of mentoring they planned on conducting in the future. To what extent did mentors believe that they would be conducting more, less, or about the same amount of mentoring in the future as they have in the past 12 months? The majority of respondents said they would either do the same (43%) or more (32%) mentoring than in the past. Only 1% respondents said they would do less.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Does Your Site Plan to do More, Less, or About the Same Amount of Mentoring in the Future? Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of responding sites Values:
Question asked: In the next three years does your site plan to do more, less, or about the same amount of mentoring that you did in the past 12 months for facilities both within and outside your company? Further exploration of the 32% who said they would be willing to do "more" mentoring revealed a similar population to the current VPP population, namely newer to VPP (54% were in VPP for under five years), and they tended to be employed at the larger sites (75% had over 100 employees). For those respondents who planned on doing more mentoring, when asked how much more mentoring, an average 15.78 hours per month was given by 101 respondents.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Additional Hours Willing To Mentor Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 6 - One bar for each hour range showing the number of sites Values:
mean=15.78 hrs Question asked: How many hours per month would your site be willing to mentor other facilities both within and outside your company in the future? 4.0 OUTREACH EFFORTS 4.1 The Overall Impact of Outreach Respondents were asked if they conducted outreach activities in the past 12 months either at the request of OSHA or for other organizations (non-OSHA related). Outreach includes assistance and information provided to prospective VPP applicants such as conducting VPP workshops and training, holding community safety days, and serving as an advocate for the VPP. Outreach also includes assistance and information provided to internal or external corporate entities to promote safety and health principles and practices, including OSHA Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, making presentations on safety and health at conferences, or conducting training workshops. Outreach includes those activities conducted at the request of OSHA or at the request of other organizations.
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Did Anyone at Your Site Perform Outreach Activities in the Past 12 Months (either for OSHA or for Other Organizations) Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 6 - Two bars for each answer showing the percentage of sites Values:
Question asked: Did you or anyone at your site perform outreach activities either at the request of OSHA or at the request of Other Organizations in the one year period January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004. As with mentoring activities, a majority of respondents noted they have been conducting outreach activities recently. The average is 3.87 years of outreach activities per site.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: # of Years Conducting Outreach Activities Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 5 - One bar for each year range showing the number of sites Values:
mean=3.87 years Question asked: Since your site was approved for VPP, how many years has your site had at least one person conducting outreach activities either at the request of OSHA or at the request of other organizations? Please only count years when outreach occurred? Of the 209 sites who said they have performed outreach in the past, 52% said they conducted outreach in the past 12 months for OSHA (the other 48% said they did not) while an additional 44% said they conducted outreach in the past 12 months for other, non-OSHA related organizations (the other 56% said they did not).
When asked how many employees conducted outreach at the request of OSHA, over one-half said one person.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: # of Employees Performing Outreach Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each employee range showing the number of sites Values:
mean=1.87 years Question asked: How many people at your site, including yourself performed outreach activities at the request of OSHA in the one year period January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004 4.2 Specific Outreach Activities Conducted at the Request of OSHA Respondents were asked what kind of activities they had conducted in the 2004 calendar year at the request of OSHA. Eight specific activities were queried and an additional open-ended answer allowed respondents to add more activities.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Which Outreach Activities Did You Conduct in the Past 12 Months Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 9 - One bar for each outreach activity showing the number of sites Values:
Question asked: How many times in the one year period January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2004 did you and others at your site conduct the following activities at the request of OSHA. Note: Multiple responses were allowed by each site. These numbers can be extrapolated to the VPP population at large.
Of the 753 activities mentioned by respondents (multiple responses were allowed by each site), one-quarter were for providing training in support of VPP. For those sites that conducted additional "other" outreach activities (29 mentions), the following list provided the additional outreach activities. Outreach events reported at the request of OSHA
When the number of activities, the hours, and attendance were extrapolated to the entire VPP population, the table below shows Gallup’s estimate of activity in calendar year 2004 at the request of OSHA.
NOTE: Column G is calculated by multiplying the total extrapolated number of events (see above in FINDINGS box) by the percentage of occurrence for that event in 2004.
The next question in this section asked respondents if the activities they were conducting were within their company or outside of their company. The responses varied by activity. For example, just under one-half (45%) of those conducting safety and health workshops did so within their own companies.
Question asked: Was this activity within your own company? The final question asked respondents if they are planning on doing more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities at the request of OSHA in the next three years as they have done in the past year.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Would You Do More, Less, or About the Same Amount of Outreach Activities in the Next 3 Years Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of sites Values:
Question asked: In the next three years does your site plan to do more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities at the request of OSHA than you did in the past 12 months? When people were asked how much more outreach activities they were interested in conducting, the following chart outlines the responses. The average was an additional 11.5 hours a year that respondents were willing to spend.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Additional Hours Sites Are Willing To Spend Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 7 - One bar for each hour range showing the number of sites Values:
mean=11.46 hours per site Question asked: On average, how many hours per month would your site be willing to provide related outreach activities at the request of OSHA in the future? Further exploration of the 32% who said they would be willing to do "more" outreach activities revealed a similar population to the current VPP population, namely newer to VPP (57% were in VPP for under five years), and they tended to be employed at the larger sites (75% had over 110 employees). 4.2.2 Characteristics of Those Conducting Outreach at the Request of OSHA We next considered who the people were that were conducting outreach activities at the request of OSHA, what characteristics did they share, and what types of activities and amount of activities were they conducting. Segmentation by SIC code was considered, however, due to the lack of diversity in SIC codes, only one division was available for further analysis namely, manufacturing. However, from the graph below, we see that all SIC divisions did, in fact, participate about equally in outreach activities with construction companies participating slightly more than other divisions.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Companies Conducting Outreach At The Request of OSHA Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each SIC Division showing the number of sites Values:
Among manufacturing sites, those that performed outreach were providing more training in support of VPP and presentations on safety and health issues at conferences than other outreach activities.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Outreach Conducted at the Request of OSHA by Manufacturing Sites Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 9 - One bar for each Outreach Activity showing the percentage of sites Values:
Another way to consider these outreach data are by employee size. It appears that those that performed outreach work at sites of various sizes, as seen below.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Breakdown by Employee Size Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each employee range showing the percentage of sites Values:
Having looked at the specific outreach activities by employee size, some differentiation was apparent.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Outreach Conducted at the Request of OSHA by Employee Size Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 27 - Three bars for each Outreach Activity showing the percentage of sites Values:
Smaller and medium-sized sites preferred providing training in support of VPP and presentations on safety and health issues at conferences, while larger sites preferred presentations on safety and health issues at conferences and other activities. Smaller sites also showed a preference for strategic partnerships while medium-sized sites did more community safety and outreach days. 4.3 Specific Outreach Activities Conducted at the Request of Other Organizations Respondents were asked what kind of activities they had conducted in the 2004 calendar year at the request of other organizations (not OSHA). Eight specific activities were queried and an additional open-ended answer allowed respondents to add more activities.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: How Many Times Was This Activity Conducted in 2004? Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 9 - One bar for each activity showing the number of sites Values:
Question asked: How many times in the one year period January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2004 did you and others at your site conduct the following activities at the request of Other Organizations. Note: Multiple responses were allowed by each site. These numbers can be extrapolated to the population at large.
Of the 498 activities mentioned by respondents (multiple responses were allowed by each site), over one-quarter (28%) were for providing training in support of VPP. For those sites that conducted additional "other" outreach activities (58 mentions), the following activities were mentioned as comprising that category (not all respondents filled in the outreach activities they completed). Outreach events reported at the request of organizations other than OSHA
When the number of activities, the hours, and attendance were extrapolated to the entire VPP population, the table below shows Gallup’s estimate of activity in calendar year 2004 at the request of other organizations.
NOTE: Column G is calculated by multiplying the total extrapolated number of events (see above in FINDINGS box) by the percentage of occurrence for that event in 2004
The next question in this section asked respondents if the activities they were conducting were within their company or outside of their company. The responses varied by activity. For example, about one-half (49%) of those conducting safety and health workshops did so within their own companies.
The final question in this section asked respondents if they were planning on doing more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities at the request of other organizations in the next three years as they have done in the past year. Just under one-third (29%) said they would be willing to do more outreach.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Would You Do More, Less, or About the Same Amount of Outreach Activities in the Next 3 Years Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 4 - One bar for each answer showing the percentage of sites Values:
Question asked: In the next three years does your site plan to do more, less, or about the same amount of outreach activities at the request of other organizations than you did in the past 12 months? When those who said they were willing to do more outreach activities were queried as to how much more, the following chart shows their responses.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Additional Hours Sites Are Willing To Spend Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 7 - One bar for each hour range showing the number of sites Values:
mean=11.21 hours per site Question asked: On average, how many hours per month would your site be willing to provide related outreach activities at the request of organizations other than OSHA in the future? Those who said they would be willing to conduct more outreach tended to be newer to VPP (61% were in VPP for under five years). They also tended to work in slightly larger companies (75% had over 125 employees). 4.3.2 Characteristics of Those Conducting Outreach at the Request of Other Organizations As with sites conducting outreach at the request of OSHA, the vast majority of sites were in manufacturing, which provided the only adequate sample that can be used to analyze the type of outreach activities performed. Similar to those manufacturing sites conducting outreach at the request of OSHA, most activities provided at the request of other organizations are for providing training in support of VPP and presentations on safety and health issues at conferences. However, this group appeared to do less advocating in the business community than was done for OSHA. This group also conducted fewer strategic partnership and alliance work but more VPP application workshop work than they did at the request of OSHA.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Outreach Conducted at the Request of Other Organizations by Manufacturing Sites Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 9 - One bar for each Outreach activity showing the percentage of sites Values:
When segmenting these data by employee size, some smaller sample sizes appeared. However, we present these data because when considered overall, a much lower number of respondents conducted outreach at the request of other organizations and therefore, this sample may be representative of those who have done these activities.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Breakdown by Employee Size Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 3 - One bar for each employee range showing the percentage of sites Values:
When segmenting outreach activities for other organizations by employee size of site, some differences were apparent. Small- and medium-sized sites did more of providing training in support of VPP and presentations on safety and health issues at conferences while larger sites did more community safety days/outreach days and safety and health workshops for other organizations.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Outreach Conducted at the Request of Other Organizations by Employee Size Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 27 - Three bars for each Outreach Activity showing the percentage of sites Values:
5.0 PAST DATA COLLECTION EFFORTS The third and final section of the Web questionnaire consisted of data collected on the sites’ injury and illness data prior to their approval into VPP. Gallup collected data from sites for the five years prior to acceptance into the program. In total, of the 380 sites that responded to the questionnaire, approximately 80 were approved into VPP after December 31, 2002, which would require them to submit data for this questionnaire on OSHA 300 logs [NOTE: 300 logs were required as of January 1, 2002, however, because we collected data starting with the year prior to approval, for those who were approved in 2002 and before, we would have only collected 200 log data]. Thirty sites responded to the questionnaire who were approved in 2004 and 50 sites were approved in 2003. Of the 80 sites that qualified to use at least one year of 300 logs, only 25 sites filled out the 300 logs on the questionnaire for the years needed. For that reason, the analysis provided below is for only those sites who submitted all their injury and illness data on OSHA 200 logs, which would be those sites approved into VPP on or before December 31, 2002, for a total of 295 sites or 92% of all sites that provided data. The final part of this section discusses how these same sites have performed on their injury and illness data once they were accepted into the VPP. Gallup did not collect these data, but these data were submitted to Gallup by OSHA. We present the data for comparative purposes only. The remainder of the analysis for this section was based on time-sensitive information and specifically asked the question, to what extent does time prior to VPP acceptance play a role in the injury and illness rates of a given site. Or, in other words, is it the case that the further away from VPP acceptance a given site is, the worse its injury and illness rates are? In addition, in the analysis, our intention was to review individual differences from year-to-year to understand if any given year had more of a change in injury and illness rates than any other year. To answer these questions, several statistical analyses were undertaken. For all analyses, Total Case Incident Rate (TCIR) and Days Away from work, Restricted work, or job Transfer injury and illness (DART) rates were used as proxies for injury and illness rates. READING THE CHARTS BELOW: Because we asked respondents for data from the five years prior to their acceptance in VPP, year 1 indicates one year prior to their acceptance into VPP, year 2 indicates two years prior to acceptance into VPP, etc. First, we examined the mean scores of both TCIR and DART rates for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: TCIR and DART Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Into VPP Chart Type: Line Graph Chart Elements: 2 - One line for TCIR and one for DART showing the mean scores for the five years prior to acceptance into VPP Values:
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: Changes in TCIR and DART Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Chart Type: Vertical Bar Chart Elements: 8 - Two bars for each year change showing the change in rates for both TCIR and DART Values:
Additional analysis was performed to see if the fourth year phenomenon occurred regardless of size of company and SIC code. Although the pattern was much more distinct among the small sites, the trend of a fourth year drop in sites’ injury and illness rates was also clear in the medium and large sites.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: TCIR Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Into VPP by Employee Size of Site Chart Type: Line Graph Chart Elements: 3 - One line for each employee size of site showing the TCIR rate for each year prior to acceptance into VPP Values:
*NOTE: Small is <99 employees, medium is 100-499 employees, large is 500+ employees per site  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: DART Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Into VPP by Employee Size of Site Chart Type: Line Graph Chart Elements: 3 - One line for each employee size of site showing the DART rate for each year prior to acceptance into VPP Values:
*NOTE: Small is <99 employees, medium is 100-499 employees, large is 500+ employees per site When examining sites by SIC codes, only three SIC divisions had sufficient sample for analysis — manufacturing, transportation, and services — they were grouped as follows.
The most dramatic difference was seen in the transportation industry where there was a large bump in injury and illness rates. A similar bump in the manufacturing industry was shown, while the service industry showed a gradual decline over time.  Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: TCIR Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Into VPP by SIC Code Chart Type: Line Graph Chart Elements: 3 - One line for each SIC code showing the TCIR rate for each year prior to acceptance into VPP Values:
 Text Version of Chart Data: Chart Title: DART Rates for the Five Years Prior to Acceptance Into VPP by SIC Code Chart Type: Line Graph Chart Elements: 3 - One line for each SIC code showing the DART rate for each year prior to acceptance into VPP Values:
But were these jumps in rates significant if we compared them over time? The answer, as shown in the following graph, is yes. The following graph shows mean TCIR rates for each of the years 1 through 5 prior to VPP approval. The line for each year indicates the spread of the means (a listing of all the means) for that year. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||