Development and validation of a food safety knowledge, attitudes and self-reported practices (KAP) questionnaire in Omani consumers

Consumer knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) play important roles in ensuring food safety since the home is implicated in many food poisoning cases. This study aimed to develop and validate a food safety KAP questionnaire for Omani consumers. This study also aimed to assess the food safety KAP of Omani female staff at Sultan Qaboos University and its association with certain socio-demographic variables. The developed questionnaire consisted of 4 sections, socio-demographics, knowledge, attitudes and practices. It was tested for consistency and validated. Cronbach's alpha for knowledge, attitudes and practices was 0.766, 0.714 and 0.687, respectively. The paired t-test evaluation of the test-retest attempts found no significant difference between the attempts (p > 0.05) and there was a high correlation (p ranging from < 0.001 to 0.002) between the two attempts. The KAP study (n = 297) showed that most of the respondents are engaged in food preparation at home at least 3 days a week. The majority also prepared food at home in most of the days of the week and rarely ate or bought food from restaurants or cafes. The study found that the majority of participants had low food safety knowledge scores. A mean of 43% of the respondents was able to correctly answer the knowledge questions, while the mean of respondents with positive attitudes and proper practices was 76.9% and 70%, respectively. Knowledge scores were affected by age, educational level and income but not by marital status. Attitudes and practices were affected by marital status but not age, educational level or income. The association between the KAP of respondents was found to be weak. It can be concluded that the level of knowledge among the population of the study needs to be increased to match the level of attitudes and practices.