Abstract
Background: With high rates of temporary workers and a transient worker population, the U.S. construction workforce presents a challenge for long-term research and outreach activities. Increasing availability of affordable cell phone technologies may provide an opportunity for research follow-up among construction workers once they leave the worksite. Using pilot study survey data we characterize and examine the association of cell phone technology ownership and cellular text/email services among a non-probabilistic sample of payroll and temporary construction workers.Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used to administer a one-time paper-based anonymous survey to construction workers working at construction sites in Florida, USA. The survey featured questions on sociodemographic characteristics, occupational history, cell phone technology ownership, and cellular text/email services capabilities.Results: Among the 223 construction worker survey respondents, 31.4% identified as temporary workers and 68.6% were on payroll and 87.4% owned a cell phone. Construction workers who own a cell phone had greater than a high school education (28.9% vs. 25.0%; p = 0.019), made >$30,000/year (27.1% vs. 14.8%; p = 0.011), had same cell phone number for >1 year (74.4% vs. 40.7%; p = 0.001), and were employed as a payroll worker (71.0% vs. 50.0%; p = 0.037). Temporary construction workers compared to their payroll counterparts were significantly less likely to have email services on their cell phone [unadjusted-odds ratio 0.41 (95% CI: 0.17–0.97)].Conclusion: Cell phone ownership and smartphone-enabled technologies such as email/texting capabilities are higher among payroll than temporary construction workers. Further research on frequency of cell phone use and types of email/texting services used by construction workers are needed.
Highlights
There are well-documented challenges in the recruitment, retention and follow-up of construction workers in both observational and experimental occupational research study designs [1,2,3]
We conducted secondary analysis of survey data collected in June 2016 from the Falls Reported Among Minority Employees (FRAME) project [2], a cross-sectional study design assessing injuries and near-misses in construction workers
In the univariable logistic regression analyses (Table 1), temporary construction workers were significantly less likely to report having cell phone ownership compared to payroll construction workers
Summary
There are well-documented challenges in the recruitment, retention and follow-up of construction workers in both observational and experimental occupational research study designs [1,2,3]. These challenges are more pronounced in the nonunion labor force where workers have less social and professional cohesion afforded by the union setting [4]. The construction industry has grown its use of non-standard employment arrangements and employment through temporary staffing agencies, further challenging approaches to follow-up with construction workers for research studies [6]. Using pilot study survey data we characterize and examine the association of cell phone technology ownership and cellular text/email services among a non-probabilistic sample of payroll and temporary construction workers
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