A comparison of participant gains in attitude and behavior after experiencing a food safety curriculum in traditional and computer delivered environments

Child care providers in Mississippi are required by the Mississippi Health Department to obtain food manager's training and certification. The TummySafe(c) program satisfies this requirement and is offered in a self-paced computer delivered version and a traditional classroom version. This research explores participant changes in attitude and self-reported behaviors in the two methods of curriculum delivery as well as the correlation of knowledge change with attitude and self-reported behavior change. A quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test design was used. Attitude change was not significantly different in the two methods. Traditional participants reported a higher change in self-reported behaviors than computer delivered participants. Both attitude and self-reported behavior change were positively correlated with knowledge gain.