Development of a food safety attitude and practice questionnaire for Iranian consumers

Abstract

AbstractTo develop and to offer a promising tool to measure food safety attitude and practice for Iranian consumers, a pool of questions on four major areas of food handling was extracted from the literature by a team of experts in food, nutrition and epidemiology, and sent to 30 experts to be approved for content validity. The study was conducted in the capital city of Tehran. Two hundred and thirty‐three participants, 18 years and older, completed the 56‐item questionnaire. Principle component factor analysis (PCFA) plus a Varimax rotation method was used for exploration of construct validity. Cronbach's alpha (α) and intra‐class correlation coefficient were used to demonstrate questionnaire reliability. PCFA revealed that three and four main components existed in attitude and practice questionnaires, respectively, explaining 60.02% and 59.6% of total variations. α was 0.681, 0.632 and 0.308 for the components of attitude and 0.689; 0.674, 0.647 and 0.167 for the components of practice questionnaires respectively. The questionnaire proved to be a useful tool in the assessment of food safety attitudes and practices among Iranian consumers.