Development of a food safety attitude and practice questionnaire for Iranian consumers Atefeh Fooladi Moghaddam 1 , Farnaz Khoshnevisan 2 , Dolly Bondarianzadeh 2 , Mehrdad Mohammadi 3 and Hooman Bakhshandeh Abkenar 4 1 Food Deputy, Food and Drug Organization, Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Nutrition Research, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 3 Department of Food Technology Research, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 4 Rajaie Cardiovascular, Medical and Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Keywords Food safety, attitude, practice, questionnaire, validation. Correspondence Mehrdad Mohammadi, Department of Food Technology Research, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, No. 7, Hafezi (West Arghavan) St., Farahzadi Blvd., Qods Town, Postal Code 1981619573, Tehran, Iran. E-mail: mohammadi@sbmu.ac.ir doi: 10.1111/ijcs.12102 Abstract To develop and to offer a promising tool to measure food safety attitude and practice for Iranian consumers, a pool of questions on four major areas of food handling was extracted from the literature by a team of experts in food, nutrition and epidemiology, and sent to 30 experts to be approved for content validity. The study was conducted in the capital city of Tehran.Two hundred and thirty-three participants, 18 years and older, completed the 56-item questionnaire. Principle component factor analysis (PCFA) plus a Varimax rotation method was used for exploration of construct validity. Cronbach’s alpha (α) and intra-class corre- lation coefficient were used to demonstrate questionnaire reliability. PCFA revealed that three and four main components existed in attitude and practice questionnaires, respectively, explaining 60.02% and 59.6% of total variations. α was 0.681, 0.632 and 0.308 for the components of attitude and 0.689; 0.674, 0.647 and 0.167 for the components of practice questionnaires respectively. The questionnaire proved to be a useful tool in the assessment of food safety attitudes and practices among Iranian consumers. Introduction Foodborne diseases have become one of the most prevalent public health problems in the world today (Redmond and Griffith, 2003a). Since a considerable amount of food preparation and handling occurs in the domestic environment, the consumer has been described as the ‘final line of defence’ against foodborne illnesses (Gilbert, 1983). Recognizing that all the contributors for the problem are controllable by attaining certain food safety skills, researchers have focused their efforts upon food safety knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of the consumers (Arendt et al., 2011). As a result, consumer education has become one of the most common mechanisms to combat foodborne illnesses. To be effec- tive, educational programmes should include approaches that focus upon reducing the prevalence of food handling, preparation and consumption malpractices that result in foodborne disease (Yang et al., 1998; Medeiros et al., 2001). Consumer education messages should include the ubiquity of microorganisms and toxins and a comprehensive description of foodborne illness asso- ciated with each agent, as well as prevention strategies. Failure to fully recognize the sources of foodborne disease prevents consumers from taking corrective action and knowledge of the consequences of unsafe practices can enhance motivation and adherence to safety guidelines (Bondarianzadeh et al., 2007). Measurement of consumer attitudes and practices can provide a basis for planning health promotion programmes. These studies are generally conducted to provide information for the develop- ment of effective communication strategies to promote safe food- handling practices (Medeiros et al., 2004; Hislop and Shaw, 2009; Redmond and Griffith, 2009; Yarrow et al., 2009). A review of research methods used in consumer food safety studies, including questionnaire and interview surveys, focus group discussions and observation studies, found that surveys were the most common method for obtaining information on consumer food safety knowl- edge, attitude and practices (Redmond and Griffith, 2003b). This is in line with Iranian culture as well, since it is not easy to perform an observational study and brings camera into their private kitchens. However, assessment of an individual’s food safety attitudes and practices requires a well-developed and tested instrument to reduce the possibility of eliciting inaccurate information. This instrument should be reliable and valid: reliability has been defined as “the degree to which measurements is consistent” and validity “the extent to which the procedure measures what it is International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423 International Journal of Consumer Studies 38 (2014) 367–373 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 367