Reliability and validity of knowledge, attitude, practice, and perception (KAP2) questionnaire on food poisoning and its prevention among consumers in Bangi and Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract

Most food poisoning outbreaks are caused by consumers’ poor knowledge, attitude, perception, and behaviour in relation to food safety. A valid and reliable tool is thus needed tomeasure these factors among the consumers. A total of 79 respondents participated in this pilotsurvey using convenient sampling, and participants self-completed the questionnaire given.Item analysis was conducted to determine the difficulty and discrimination indices of 40 itemsinvolved in knowledge construction. Construct validity and reliability were performed on 33items which measured attitudes, preventive practices, and perceptions. Item analysis showedthat more than 80% of respondents answered 19 items correctly. The discrimination indexrevealed that 16 items scored below 0.20. The Average Variance Extraction for all latentconstructs, namely attitude, practice, and perception met acceptable threshold values of 0.527,0.517, and 0.535, respectively. The Fornell-Larcker criterion suggested that three latentconstructs were acceptable for discriminant validity. The internal consistency and reliabilityfor all scaled items in each construct were good, with Cronbach’s alpha values of more than0.7 (0.820, 0.809, and 0.799 for attitude, practice, and perception, respectively). In conclusion,the present work indicated that the knowledge, attitude, practice, and perception (KAP2)questionnaire used could be a valid and reliable measure to evaluate consumer’s knowledge,attitude, preventive practice, and perception on food poisoning