Knowledge and attitudes of personnel working in the cafeteria of secondary schools towards the food safety of students and teachers

The aim of the research was to evaluate the level of food safety knowledge of students, teachers and personnel working in the cafeteria of secondary schools, their attitudes towards food safety and compliance of the food seervice provided at schools with food safety rules.Target population of the study was composed of official secondary schools (25) providing food service in central districts of Ankara Province. Of the total number of personnel working in the cafeteria (N=64), 58 who voluntarily accepted to take part in the study, 10th and 11th grade students (n=912) and teachers (n=355) constituted the study samples. Totally 1325 people were included in the research.Implementations related to food safety in the school cafeteria; attitudes and knowledge of cafeteria personnel, students and teachers about food safety and their opinions about school cafeteria were assessed via questionnaire form. Questionnaire form was developed by the researcher and factor analysis, validity and reliability tests were done on the basis of the pilot application data. At the end of the pilot application, reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.85 for attitude scale, 0.95 for school cafeteria evaluation scale and 0.88 for knowledge test. Questionnaire forms were finalized and sampling was applied at the end of the arrangements made in line with the pilot application results. Obtained data was analyzed with SPSS 15 for Windows (Statistical Program for Social Sciences) package program. Numerical and percentage distributions and arithmetic means of the data were represented in tables. Sub-problems of the study were tried to be solved by applying correlation analysis, via x2 test, t test, F test, Tamhane?s T2 test.According to the study findings, 29.6% of the participant students, 54.6% of the participant teachers and 37.9% of the participant cafeteria personnel were female. 37.7% of the teachers and 22.4% of cafeteria personnel were 35 or under the age of 35, 37.2% of the teachers and 36.2% of the cafeteria personnel were in 36 - 44 age range and the majority of the students were in 15 ? 16 age range; half of the cafeteria personnel were primary school graduates and 63.8% of them were found not to have received vocational training and majority of them did not receive in-service training.Almost all of the cafeteria personnel, 50.1% of teachers and 45.2% of students were recorded to have lunch mostly in school cafeteria and 74.1% of personnel, 30.4% of students and 34.4% of teachers were found to prefer having meal in the school cafeteria since they had to do so.Deficiencies were detected in all of three groups in terms of personnel hygiene habits and food safety behaviors.Food safety knowledge of women was significantly higher than that of men (p<0.001). Intra-group evaluations produced the same results for the students and teachers, and no gender-based difference was found in the personnel (p>0.05). Group comparisons showed that teachers had the highest level of knowledge (p<0.001) among the all study groups. As the case in knowledge level, women had higher attitude scores (p<0.001-0.05) among students and teachers. There was a difference in favor of women in general attitude (p<0.01) and incorporation sub-dimension (p<0.05) among cafeteria personnel as well.No difference was found according to gender in total opinion score and in the sub-dimensions of the scale (p>0.05); however with regard to cafeteria evaluations the most positive opinions were held by the personnel and the most negative opinions were held by the students. A statistically significant difference was recorded between three groups (p<0.05).When the relationship between food safety knowledge, attitude and evaluations about cafeteria was examined; it was realized that knowledge level and attitudes of the students and teachers increased hand in hand and that the higher the knowledge level was the more negative opinion was developed about cafeteria. However no connection was found out between the personnel?s knowledge, attitude and evaluation about cafeteria. This is though to result from their failure to adopt a critical approach towards their own applications. On the basis of the findings of the study, suggestions are made to improve the food services provided by the school and to raise awareness among personnel and society towards this issue.