Development and reliability of a questionnaire to assess clinical dietitians' practices and knowledge of food safety

Objective The purposes of this study were to develop a questionnaire to assess clinical dietitians' practices and knowledge of food safety and determine the reliability of this instrument. Methods The questionnaire was developed around six areas: prevention of cross contamination, personal and environmental hygiene; control of temperature and high-risk foods and food safety for individuals with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by the test-retest method and simple Kappa statistics. Results The results showed the reliability levels: >0.61 for 95.0%, from 0.60 to 0.40 for 2.5% and <0.40 for 2.5% of the tested questions. Eighty percent of the questions were from 20.0% to 80.0% correct. Conclusion The results showed that the instrument presents an adequate difficulty level and a satisfactory reliability level for most of the questions (Kappa>0.61), suggesting that it is a good device to assess clinical dietitians' practices and knowledge of food safety, which allows for the planning of educational strategies.