Assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP)among food handlers eat colleges and canteen in the national University of Malaysia regarding food safety

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of knowledge, attitude and practice among food handlers at residential colleges and canteen in the main campus of the National University of Malaysia regarding the aspect offood hygiene and safety. Sixty five food handlers from two residential colleges' cafeterias and one Faculty of Science and Technology's canteen were involved in the study. Data was collected from the food handlers through the methods of questionnaire and analyzed using the SPSS version 12.0. In general, respondents' knowledge was quite poor with mean point of 57.8%. However, they have good knowledge on personal hygiene and definition of foodborne diseases with mean point of 93.85% and 73.85% respectively. Adversely, their knowledge on food storage and preparation temperatures was poor with only 28%. Respondents showed positive attitude towards two categories of questions in the aspect offood safety and hygiene (76.9%); foodborne prevention and control (70.8%). Majority of the respondents have an average practice in all part of the questions. Analysis tests showed significant difference (p<0.05) between the relationship of respondents' knowledge with their working experiences (p=0.008), attitude with training attended (p=0.006) and practice with gender (p=0.032). There was significantly different jar knowledge based on cafeteria (p=O.OOO). In conclusion, amongst the three levels, respondents showed only good attitude in food handling and all the cafeterias in this survey need to increase the hygiene of their food handlers' hand and environment of the premises.