Design of an Online Food Safety Training Toolkit (FOSTT) to Enhance Novice Food Handlers' Food Safety Knowledge

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that each year approximately 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from a foodborne illness (CDC, 2016). The most common causes of foodborne illnesses are associated with mishandling food and poor food safety practices at food preparation facilities. Thus, pre-employment training on personal and food hygiene is one of the most effective ways to prevent and mitigate possible food contamination risks. Currently, accredited online food safety training courses focus on response strengthening tactics, in which the learner is a passive recipient of rewards and punishments and the instructor is the dispenser of rewards and punishments. These online methods typically use excessive text, audio, and visuals to disseminate information to the learner. This method of online training can lead to extraneous processing; cognitive processing that does not support the instructional objective and is created by ineffective instructional layout. This lack of instructional support can be particularly challenging for workers with lower levels of education, or novice learners. Therefore, two studies were conducted to develop a food safety training toolkit to accommodate novice food service workers. The first study’s objective was to create a tool (Food Safety Training Toolkit) that better prepared novice learners for state-mandated and accredited food safety training (FST) exams and test its efficacy compared to commonly used FST programs. The methodological strategy for this study followed a mixed-methods design for the development of the toolkit. The results indicate that the main effect for three out of the five variables were statistically significant for personal hygiene, cleaning and sanitation and time and temperature after FST was implemented. These significant differences were found with participants who took the Food Safety Training Toolkit (FoSTT) intervention that scored highest for those three variables. FST certificates are valid for up to five years; however, results showed that overall food safety knowledge did not significantly change from the baseline to the final survey (three month difference); indicating that food handlers should have a refresher FST three months after initial training. The second study’s objective was to test the efficacy of FoSTT that better prepares low-literacy individuals for the state-mandated food safety training exams. Furthermore, previous studies have failed to identify how self-efficacy affects low literacy food service workers in food safety training and education efforts. The current research adopts the theory of self-efficacy that derives from the Social Cognitive Theory in a food safety context to examine if it is an effective theoretical framework when training low-literacy food service workers in food safety. To address this gap, the present research used a between-subjects experimental design to examine the effect of the experimental treatment (FoSTT) for (a) self-efficacy (b) the 5 major risk factors that the CDC has identified to cause most foodborne illness outbreaks: purchasing food from unsafe sources; failing to cook food correctly; holding food at incorrect temperatures; using contaminated equipment; and practicing poor personal hygiene. The results showed that the participants that were exposed the FoSTT FST intervention (experimental group) had higher overall food safety knowledge scores. In addition, the results showed that both groups (experimental and control) had increased self-efficacy. As providing accommodation for low-literacy food handlers could be a challenge, it is still a mandatory requirement for foodservice managers to address and ensure all their food handlers are certified. Through this study and this toolkit, foodservice managers will have an accessible online food safety training tool that they may utilize to accommodate their low-literacy employees’ food safety training needs and better prepare them to take the food handlers’ certification.Hotel and Restaurant Management, Conrad N. Hilton College o