Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sections: 1) Respondents demographic informa-
tion, 2) food handler knowledge about food hygiene
and sanitation, 3) food handler attitudes towards
food hygiene and sanitation, and 4) food handler
self-reported food hygiene and sanitation practices.
Knowledge items were measured using nominal
scale with yes or no response. Respondents' knowl-
edge was calculated by the percentage of correct
response for all the knowledge items. A 5-point
Likert scale was used for measuring food hygiene
attitudes (1
Strongly agree).
Similarly, food handler self-reported food hygiene
practices were measured using 5-point scale (1
=
Strongly disagree, 5
=
=
Never, 5
=
Always).
2.3
Pilot testing
According to Bourque and Fielder (1995), all ques-
tions should be pre-tested or pilot test to check
whether the ideas in designing the questions are
reliable and easy to understand by the respondents.
A pilot test of the survey questionnaire was con-
ducted by involving food handlers (n
Figure 1. Percentage of respondents who obtained
100% score for different category of food hygiene knowl-
edge questions.
30) from
medium-size restaurants or food premises in Ser-
dang area.
=
respondent age between 21 to 30 years old (54.0%)
followed by those age less than 20 years old (26.5%).
Possibly, some of the respondents were the nearby
university students who work part time job during
their studies. Most of the respondents were single
(71.0%) and the highest educational level for most
of them were either SPM/STPM (40.0%) or Cer-
tificate (Diploma) (40.0%). Respondents with less
than five years work experience in the foodservice
industry constituted 75.5% of total respondents
followed by those who have between six and ten
years experience (17.5%).
2.4
Data collection procedures
An approval letter from Universiti Putra Malaysia
was granted to conduct this study. The question-
naires were distributed from September 2013 until
end of October 2013.The approval letter was basi-
cally to prove to the owners or managers of the res-
taurants that the study conducted was legitimate.
After researcher received the permissions from the
restaurant owners, the questionnaires were distrib-
uted among the food handlers and it require only
10 to 15 minutes for the respondents to complete
the questionnaires. Respondents were also given
three days to complete the questionnaires if they
have no time to finish it before the researcher
return to collect the questionnaire.
3.2
Food hygiene knowledge
Figure 1 presents the level of knowledge among the
food handlers in Serdang for different aspects of
food hygiene. Respondents were assessed on their
knowledge about hand washing (2 items), personal
hygiene (7 items), cross-contamination (2 items)
and other aspect such as storage temperature of
foods and chemical materials and microorganism (4
items). Overall, respondents' knowledge was highest
on the aspect of personal hygiene. A total of 96.29%
respondents answered correctly all questions related
to personal hygiene followed by cross-contamination
prevention (95.75%) and hand-washing (72.5%).
Specifically, questions on personal hygiene include
keep finger nail short and smoking, eating and
drinking are not allowed at food preparation area,
coughing or sneezing is not allowed at food prepara-
tion area, and food handlers must wear clean over-
alls, gloves and hats while preparing the foods.
Questions for cross contamination was related
to use of different chopping board for raw and
2.5
Data analysis
The data for this research was analyzed using Sta-
tistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version
20. Descriptive statistics including mean, standard
deviation, frequency, and percentage were used to
summarize the data.
3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1
Respondents profile
Slightly more than half of the respondents were
female food handlers (56.5%). The majority of
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