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Knowledge, attitude, and practice among food handlers of semi-industrial catering: a cross sectional study at one of the governmental organization in Tehran

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Abstract

Purpose

food handlers have an important role in transmitting pathogens from raw materials to cooked ones. This study was conducted to determine the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of 95 food handlers on five keys to safer food based on World Health Organization questionnaires in semi-industrial catering in a government office in Tehran.

Materials and methods

specialists reviewed the validity of questionnaires and reliability was measured using determination of inter rater agreement, relevancy and clarity of each question, and the tool as a whole was evaluated by the content validity method. The Cronbach’s alpha and repeatability were measured with intra-cluster correlation through repeated test-piloting after one month.

Results

In spite of good levels of KAP, lack of knowledge was observed in some items such as cooking thoroughly and keeping food at safe temperatures. All of the participants had good knowledge about washing hands (100% correct answers) and Low level of knowledge with 46.3% correct answers belonged to put cooked meat at room temperature question; in attitude section, 99% of the food handlers were regarded a positive attitude about the cleaning of surface in the kitchen to reduces the risk of illness; a worrying issue is 57% of participants agreed that by looking at foods can distinguish safe and spoiled ones finally 100% of the respondents were considered to have good behavior. Significant relations were found between knowledge and attitude (p < 0.001) and between attitude and practice (p = 0.001).

Conclusions

Educational training and creating motivation to promote knowledge and turning it into practice seem necessary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Health Engineering Department, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Razeghi Fariba, Jahed Khaniki Gholamreza, Haghi Ehsan & Yunesian Masoud

  2. Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nedjat Saharnaz

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  1. Razeghi Fariba
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  2. Jahed Khaniki Gholamreza
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Correspondence to Yunesian Masoud.

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Research limitation

We adopted the questionnaires for semi-industrial and non-industrial catering in Iran and studied only five keys for safer food.

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Fariba, R., Gholamreza, J.K., Saharnaz, N. et al. Knowledge, attitude, and practice among food handlers of semi-industrial catering: a cross sectional study at one of the governmental organization in Tehran. J Environ Health Sci Engineer 16, 249–256 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-018-0312-8

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