One such cross-sectional study included 319 adolescents, between the ages of 16 and 19 years, who were full-time students in high school or college and were working for pay, at least 5 hours per week, in a formal organization (Frone, 1998). The study population was not randomly sampled but rather recruited through advertisements. Participants were 40% male and 68% white. In this group, too, adolescent males were more likely than their female peers to experience an injury at work. The study author suggested that gender differences in exposure to work hazards and in on-the-job substance use may explain, in part, this gender difference in injury risk. Adolescents who reported using alcohol or marijuana while working were at an increased risk of occupational injury, as were adolescents who reported exposure to more physical hazards at work. Both of these scenarios were more common among adolescent males.

Evensen, Schulman, Runyan, Zakocs, and Dunn (2000) conducted an additional cross-sectional study, surveying 117 15- to 17-year olds who worked in food and drink establishments, grocery stores, and other retail settings in North Carolina. (The ethnic composition of this sample was not detailed in the published report.) In this sample, too, exposure to a greater number of hazards was associated with a heightened risk of injury at work, and adolescent males were more commonly exposed to several specific job hazards.

Other potential antecedents, outlined by Runyan and Zakocs (2000), may include worker characteristics (including body build and strength, risk-taking behaviors and beliefs, and sleep habits and sleepiness), extent of job safety training and worker education, and degree of enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations.

The Safe Teen Work Project was intended to reduce the occurrence of cutting injuries among adolescents employed at grocery stores (Banco, Lapidus, Monopoli, & Zavoski, 1997). The study authors note that cutting injuries are common among adolescents who use case-cutters in their work at grocery or general merchandise establishments. Nine stores of a single grocery chain in Connecticut were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. Three stores received new, safer case-cutters and a 15-minute employee training regarding safe handling and use of the case-cutters. A second group of stores continued to use their usual case-cutters, but did receive a 15-minute employee training in safe handling of the equipment. The third group of stores continued to use the usual case-cutters and received no employee training. (The ethnic composition of the sample was not described in the published report.) Store logs provided data on lacerations during the period spanning two years before through one year after the intervention. According to these data, stores that received new equipment along with employee training saw a larger decline in the rate of laceration injuries among employees than did stores in the other two experimental conditions. Moreover, a cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that the program is very cost-effective, as those stores that received new equipment and benefited from employee training experienced net savings. There are two important caveats to consider, however, when interpreting the present results. While 31% of employees injured during this time were younger than 20 years of age, the ages of injured workers spanned from 16 to 78 years. Thus, although the program was targeted to adolescent workers, the program effect was not evaluated for adolescent workers alone. Additionally, the analysis did not include a measure of statistical precision.