Sanitary Performance and Knowledge of Elementary School Foodservice Employees in Seoul

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to evaluate the sanitary performance and knowledge of elementary school foodservice employees. The specific aim of this study was to decipher why employees cannot apply learned knowledge to real work situations. In total, 437 foodservice operation employees attended a regular sanitary education program under the auspices of Seoul Gangdong and Gangseo district offices. The five sanitary practice performance evaluators included personal hygiene, ingredient control, process control, safety management, and sanitary education. These dimensions were self-evaluated using the Likert 5-point scale. Collected data were subjected to descriptive and comparative analysis using SPSS (Version 12.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) statistical package. The main results are summarized as follows: 93.6% of the respondents were women and 57% were aged between 40~49. Total mean score of the five sanitary performance evaluators was 4.73 for elementary school. Ingredient control score was 4.86, process control 4.80, and personal hygiene 4.79. But the sanitary education field score was 4.48, which was significantly lower than the total mean score. Safety management score was 4.73. The main source of sanitary education for school foodservice employees was verbal education.