The perceived effects of work on health of rubber farmers in southern Thailand : a dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2008
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Massey University
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Abstract
This study was conducted in a rubber farming community in Southern Thailand with rubber farmers and their first-line public healthcare providers as the study informants. The study aims were to first, explore perceived effects of work exposures in rubber farming on rubber farmers’ health, second, identify decisions made in response to the effects of work exposures on health, and third, determine influencing factors on the construction of the perception and the process of decision making.
Data were obtained using ethnographic research methods, underpinned by an interpretative paradigm. Unstructured interviews and participant observation were employed as the principal means of data collection. Together with the primary methods of data collection, note taking (fieldnotes, fieldwork personal journal, and photographs) and reviewing/analysing existing documents were employed. While data were being collected, initial data analysis was carried out to make sense of information gained and direct further steps of the data collection. After terminating the data collection, ethnographic data analysis suggested by Spradley (1979, 1980) was used to determine themes to meet the aims of the study.
The study findings reveal that individual rubber farmers and healthcare providers construct perceptions of effects of rubber farming on rubber farmers’ health and decisions on the actions taken to manage the rubber farmers’ work-related health problems based on their own accounts of compounding factors. Among factors identified, discrepancies between health policy and its practice, coupled with the existence of a hierarchy of power-superior-inferior relationships among individual levels of health authority-emerge as the most powerful factors, inducing the emergence of other factors.
Recommendations made as a result of this study draw attention mainly to the minimisation of the discrepancies between health policies and their implications, and the establishment of partnership status among authorised health agencies and between health agencies and rubber farmers in order to improve the quality of occupational safety and health services provided to the rubber farmers.
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Keywords
Rubber tappers, Health, Occupational health