A comparison of two instructional methods for hospital foodservice employees : lecture discussion versus individual instruction

Graduation date: 1983The purpose of this research was to compare two instructional\ud programs of inservice training on Personal Hygiene for hospital foodservice\ud employees for knowledge retention and cost effectiveness.\ud The two instructional methods used were lecture discussion with a\ud script and transparencies and the individual instruction with cassette\ud tape and slides.\ud The population sample was ninety-five foodservice employees from\ud five Oregon hospitals. Forty-eight foodservice employees comprised\ud the lecture discussion group and forty-seven foodservice employees\ud comprised the individual instruction group. A demographic profile\ud identified eighty-one percent of the foodservice employees as having\ud four years or less work experience at their hospital in foodservice.\ud Sixty-nine percent of the hospital employees had a job title of foodservice\ud worker. Sixty-five percent of the participant population\ud also had previous training in Personal Hygiene. The evaluation tools\ud were a pre and post test consisting of 25 multiple choice items and\ud a time log to record instructor's time involved in preparation and\ud administration of the instruction. Each method was evaluated for\ud knowledge retained using the analysis of covariance at the P = .05\ud level of significance. Then each method was also evaluated for\ud cost effectiveness which included both instructor and participant\ud time and the materials cost.\ud There was no significant difference of knowledge retained between\ud the two instructional methods. The cost analysis revealed\ud that the lecture discussion method was only 7.6 percent cost effective\ud where the individual instruction was 92 percent cost effective\ud using the Gallup formula. This cost analysis included\ud both instructor and participant time along with the actual cost of\ud the instructional materials.\ud In comparison of the lecture discussion and individual instructional\ud methods there was no significant difference in learning\ud retention. However, the individual instruction was most cost\ud effective. Therefore, the individual instructional method is recommended\ud as a teaching method for hospital foodservice employee inservice\ud training