Structural Equation Modeling of Home Food Safety Practice Based on the PRECEDE Model

Introduction: Food safety is a fundamental public health issue all around the world.This study is the first attempt to design predictive model of home food safety practiceby Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach.Material &Methods: In this crosssectionalstudy, 630 urban households were randomly selected from 10 health centersin five districts of Tehran, 2016. The questionnaires were completed through interview,seeking for information on demographic status, food security (Household FoodInsecurity Access Scale (HFIAS)) and food safety (Home Food Safety Questionnaire(HFSQ)). The PRECEDE model was used as the theoretical framework for thedevelopment of HFSQ in order to assess the health needs of this community. The SEMwas applied for predicting the relationship between Socio Economic Status, foodinsecurity, and food safety in the households. Results: The SEM results showed thatthe most important factors in the final model were demographic status (t= 1.99, ɣ= 0.99)and reinforcing factors (t= 3.30, ɣ= 0.29), while enabling factors (t= -2.07, ɣ= -0.10)and demographic status (t= -4.03, ɣ= -0.13) had reverse effect on food insecurity. Foodinsecurity itself had negative effect on food safety practice (t= -2.21, ɣ= -0.16). Thefit indices indicated that the model had good fitting (RMSEA=0.036, GFI=0.94 andAGFI=0.92). Conclusion: The findings showed that food insecurity and undesirablefood practice were relatively prevalent among the households of Tehran. In addition,this model provides accurate and reliable information for policy makers to improvefood safety status and reduce food born disease in Iranian households.

کلیدواژه ها:

Home food safety ، Food insecurity ، Structural equation modeling (SEM) ، PRECEDE model ، Households