Perception and Satisfaction of Free Foodservice in Male Middle School Students in Chungnam

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research was to investigate perception, necessity, and satisfaction of a free foodservice in male middle school students. This study was conducted at male middle schools with paid foodservice (PFS group, 250 students) and with free foodservice (FFS group, 250 students) in Chungnam. Average age of stu-dents in the PFS group was 13.1 while that of FFS students was 12.8 years. Exactly 88% of PFS students and 94% of FFS students responded that school foodservice is necessary, which was a significant difference (P＜0.05). As the reason for participating in foodservice, about 32% of the PFS students answered the school’s request while 33.6% of FFS students answered nutrition, showing a significant difference (P＜0.001). Exactly 72.8% of PFS and 96.4% of FFS knew about FFS (P＜0.001). More PFS students (86.4%) than FFS students (66%) answered they would not participate in foodservice if the FFS would be introduced and the quality of meal service would deteriorate. After initiation to FFS, there were significant differences in assess-ment of foodservice: 77.6% of PFS students answered expected that the quality of foodservice would degrade, whereas 74.4% of FFS students answered that quality would not degrade (P＜0.001). Satisfaction of foodser-vice was 2.3 points for FFS students, which was significantly lower than the 2.5 points for PFS students (P＜0.001). To sum up assessment of foodservice was positive, whereas satisfaction was not significantly differ-ent between PFS and FFS. Based on this research, households, schools, and governments should promote FFS in order to diminish financial pressure for students.