Sensory quality control: Assessment of food company employees' knowledge, attitudes, and practices

This study was carried out to validate a questionnaire for assessing sensory quality control (SQC) knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP). The questionnaire, containing 24 knowledge, 13 attitudes, and nine practices items, was submitted to company representatives in South Africa and Nigeria. Confirmatory factor analysis and group comparisons among respondents and companies were carried out to validate the questionnaire. The final SQC-KAP questionnaire consists of 24 knowledge (one scale), 11 attitudes (A bifactor scale, with a general scale and two subscales representing individual attitudes to SQC and those towards company SQC) and nine practices (one scale) items. The knowledge items had acceptable indices for difficulty and discrimination, and the attitudes and practices items had acceptable item-total correlations. The final questionnaire can be used for the rapid assessment of SQC related knowledge and attitudes of food company employees and assessment of company practices. Practical Applications This study is the first to validate a questionnaire for assessing SQC related knowledge, attitudes, and practices in the food industry. The SQC-KAP questionnaire can be used to rapidly assess SQC knowledge and attitudes of food company employees for sensory services, and to identify SQC training needs. Stakeholders can also use it to assess the sensory quality practices of food companies to gauge their compliance to good practice and identify potential areas of improvement of their SQC programs.