| PurposeTo learn the knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) status of college students related to food safety in a vocational college in Yancheng city, Jiangsu Province; to analyze the main factors affecting food safety knowledge, attitudes and practice of vocational college students; to research the means to improve food safety knowledge, attitudes and practice levels of vocational college students. And to evaluate the effect of food safety education and intervention, thus providing scientific evidence for carrying out food safety education in the vocational college students.MethodsBased on the KAP model of health education, using self-made food safety knowledge, attitude and practice questionnaire for vocational students, adopting a cross-sectional survey, this study investigated the knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) status related to food safety of 2,480 college students in a vocational college in Yancheng city, and divided these students into Intervention Group A, Intervention Group B and Control Group according to the method of stratified cluster random grouping. The two intervention groups had received different forms of food safety education for 4 months, and thus compared the changes of the knowledge, attitudes and practice on food safety of the vocational students before and after intervention. The measurement data used t-test; Count Data used chi-square test; Comparison between multiple groups of mean used single factor analysis of variance; Comparison between any two means between multiple groups used the LSD method; screening the influence factors used multiple linear regression analysis. The inspection level is a= 0.05.ResultsThis study investigated 2,480 vocational students, including 176 boys and 2,304 girls; Grade One 1,685,accounting for 67.94% and Grade Two 795, accounting for 32.06%; and among them 1,428 from the Nursing Department, accounting for 57.58%,651 from the Medical Department, accounting for 26.25%and 401 form the Pharmacy Department, accounting for 16.17%.Before intervention, the scores of food safety knowledge of the Control Group, Intervention Group A and Intervention Group B were 36.48,36.52 and 36.66; attitude scores were 48.65,48.82and 48.73; behavior scores were followed 55.00,54.90and 55.30; the total KAP scores were 140.13,140.32 and 140.75; analysis of variance showed that the food safety knowledge, attitudes, behavior and total scores were no difference of the three groups before intervention (P> 0.05). After intervention, the scores of food safety knowledge of the Control Group, Intervention Group A and Intervention Group B were 36.96,49.75 and 76.27; attitude scores were 48.04,73.52 and 83.29; behavior scores were followed 49.43, 71.59 and 84.03; the total KAP scores were 134.43,194.87 and 243.59; analysis of variance showed that the food safety knowledge, attitudes, behavior and total scores were different of the three groups after intervention (P<0.05). Before and after intervention, knowledge of difference scores of the Control Group, Intervention Group A and Intervention Group B were 0.49,13.23 and 39.61; attitude of difference scores were -0.61,24.70 and 34.55; behavior of difference scores were -5.58,16.62 and 26.68; the total KAP of difference scores were -5.70, 54.55 and 102.84; analysis of variance showed that the food safety knowledge, attitudes, behavior and total scores were different of the three groups before and after intervention (P< 0.05).Factors that influence the effect of students’ KAP total scores intervention are grouping, their parents’ occupations and education background,areas of students’ coming and their monthly food consumption. The correlation coefficient of food safety knowledge and attitude, knowledge and behavior, attitude and behavior are 0.259,0.252,0.233.74.84% of the vocational students’ food safety knowledge derived from radio and television networks, 57.62% from books and magazines,48.06% from relatives and friends,30.73% from lectures and 10.08% from other resources.ConclusionsThe vocational students’ knowledge of food safety is a bit deficient, and haven’t formed good food safety attitudes and behaviors, but they are able to learn, and would like to obtain food safety knowledge through various ways such as radio and television networks. Higher vocational students’ monthly food consumption, their parents’ occupations and education background, different ways of education are the main factors affecting their food safety knowledge, attitudes, behavior. It is able to improve their food safety knowledge with the K-A-P theory as the guidance of health education, but the effect is not obvious just rely on their active self-study. We should take various kinds of food safety education methods to strengthen vocational students’ food safety education, and explore effective ways to alter the students’ poor food safety behaviors. |
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