METHOD: A survey was conducted with 403 migrant workers through phone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. Piecewise structural equation modelling and multinomial regression were applied to identify predictor variables for food safety KAP and to explore differences across nationalities.
RESULTS: The respondents were Nepalese, Filipino and Indonesian. The majority were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30 and 39 years and had worked in Malaysia for less than ten years. Knowledge was significantly correlated with attitudes and practices. Female respondents had lower knowledge and attitude scores while younger respondents had lower knowledge scores. Indonesian and Filipino respondents had lower knowledge and attitudes scores than Nepalese respondents. Understanding food safety information from social media was positively correlated with the respondents' food safety knowledge and practices.
CONCLUSION: These findings highlighted: (i) the need to target female, younger, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, and (ii) the potential of social media to improve public awareness of food safety and hygienic practices.
METHOD: A survey was conducted with 403 Nepali, Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers through phone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. Piecewise structural equation modelling was applied to identify predictor variables for DF KAP.
RESULTS: Most respondents were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30-39 years and with less than ten years work experience in Malaysia. Overall, respondents' knowledge was positively correlated with attitude but negatively with practices. Older respondents, who had completed higher education, obtained higher knowledge scores. Similarly, those with working experience of >20 years in Malaysia obtained higher attitude scores. Respondents with a previous history of DF strongly considered the removal of mosquito breeding sites as their own responsibility, hence tended to frequently practise DF preventive measures. Respondents' knowledge was also positively correlated to their understanding of DF information sourced from social media platforms.
CONCLUSION: These findings highlighted: (i) the need for targeted DF educational intervention among younger and newly arrived workers with lower levels of education and (ii) maximising the usage of social media platforms to improve DF public awareness.