Effects of Sanitary Education Administered to Elementary and Middle School Foodservice Employees with Work Experience

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the effects of sanitary education administered to elementary and middle school food-service employees with work experience. The subjects of this study were 360 school foodservice employees in Gyeonggi-do during August, 2010. Sanitary education and awareness were assessed using three major di-mensions: food sanitation (six items), personal hygiene (five items), and environmental sanitation (three items). Each dimension was categorized according to several items in the form of a self-evaluated Likert 5 point scale. The data were analyzed using SPSS WIN Version 12.0 package. The results showed that employees who worked for 5∼10 years in the foodservice industry scored better in three dimensions before sanitary ed-ucation compared to other groups. After sanitary education, all employees scored better in food sanitation than before, and employees who worked less than 5 years scored better at personal hygiene dimension than other groups. For environmental sanitation, employees who worked for 5∼10 years scored better than other groups. Employees who worked for more than 10 years scored worse before and after sanitary education but scored highest for sanitary awareness. Employees between the ages of 31 and 40 showed significantly different scores before and after sanitary education.