Development of a safe food handling knowledge questionnaire: Psychometric properties and acceptability among consumers

Purpose Foodborne illness remains high globally, with the majority of cases occurring in the domestic environment. Research in the safe food-handling domain is limited by the absence of an up-to-date and suitable measure of safe food-handling knowledge for use among consumers, with previous measures limited by questionnaire design features that increase participant burden and burnout and a lack of alignment with current safe food-handling guidelines. The purpose of this study is to develop a safe food-handling knowledge measure to capture a comprehensive understanding of consumers' safe food-handling knowledge while minimising participant burden and burnout. Design/methodology/approach Items were developed and evaluated prior to administering them to participants. Data was collected among 277 participants who completed the measure online. Findings Results indicated that the measure had good acceptability among participants in the sample (mean = 5.44, SD = 0.77, range = 2.42-7) and that the measure had acceptable reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.60), item discrimination and item difficulty. These findings suggest that the safe food-handling knowledge measure would be suitable for use in future studies examining consumer safe food-handling. Originality/value This study provides an updated, acceptable and suitable safe food-handling knowledge measure for use among consumers to better understand consumers' understanding of safe food-handling practices. Use of this measure in future research can improve the measurement of consumer safe food-handling knowledge to allow for better tailoring of future interventions and health campaigns for safe food-handling among consumers.