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reviewer of information); prior searching for food safety
information on Reddit (yes versus no) and, if yes, type of
food safety information searched for (handwashing, washing
of foods, cleaning and sanitation, food storage and thawing,
cooking, safe foods, and other) and whether the information
was adopted at home (yes versus no); and intention to search
for advice on Reddit about food safety practices at home in
the following 2 weeks (7-point scale from very unlikely to
very likely).
The next section asked about TAM and TPB constructs,
all of which were measured on a 7-point scale. Three TAM
constructs were investigated: perceived usefulness of Reddit,
perceived ease of use of Reddit, and perceived credibility
of information on Reddit (10, 39). Perceived usefulness
(I find that searching for information on Reddit is useful:
strongly disagree to strongly agree) and ease of use (I find
that searching for information on Reddit is very easy to
very difficult) were measured with one question item each.
Perceived credibility of information was measured with three
items (In general, I find that information posted by users on
Reddit is very inaccurate to very accurate, very incredible
to very credible, and very unbelievable to very believable).
TPB constructs of attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived
behavioral control were measured with two question items
each. The attitude questions (For me, preparing, handling,
and storing food safely at home is...) included one item for
instrumental attitudes (very unnecessary to very necessary)
and another for experiential attitudes (very unpleasant to
very pleasant). Subjective norm included one question item
for injunctive norm (Most people who are important to me
think that I should prepare, handle, and store food safely
at home: strongly disagree to strongly agree) and one for
social pressure (I feel under social pressure, e.g., from family,
friends, or society at large, to prepare, handle, and store food
safely at home: strongly disagree to strongly agree). Perceived
behavioral control included one question item for selfefficacy (I am confident that if I wanted to, I could prepare,
handle, and store food safely at home: strongly disagree
to strongly agree) and one for controllability (Preparing,
handling, and storing food safely at home is beyond my
control: strongly disagree to strongly agree).
The next seven questions asked participants about their
self-reported safe food handling practices at home, including
handwashing frequency (never to always), food thermometer
ownership (yes versus no) and frequency of use (never to
always), methods of checking the degree of cooking doneness
(visual, time, taste, touch, temperature, and other), frequency
of washing of poultry before cooking (never to always),
cooling time for leftovers (2 h or less, 2 to 4 h, 4 to 6 h, or
> 6 h), and storage times for leftovers (1 day or less, 2 days,
3 days, 4 days, or > 4 days). The " never to always " response
options were measured on a 5-point scale. Sociodemographic
information was collected on country of residence (United
States, United Kingdom, Canada, or other), gender (male,

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female, or nonbinary), age group (18 to 24, 25 to 32, or 33
to 39), education level (less than high school, high school
or equivalent, apprenticeship or trades, some college or
university, college or university degree, postgraduate degree,
or other), prior foodborne illness in past year (yes versus no),
experience in the food service industry (yes versus no), and
main source of information about food safety at home (family
and friends, experience, recipe blogs, Reddit, other websites,
social media, health professionals, cookbooks, or other).
The questionnaire was pretested through a cognitive
interviewing process (30). Ten young adults meeting the
eligibility criteria were recruited for in-person cognitive
interviews. Each question was read to the participants, and
they were asked to communicate their response and thought
process in a think-aloud approach. Feedback from this
process resulted in removing and rewording some questions
to improve the clarity and conciseness of the questionnaire
before implementation.
Data analysis
Responses were downloaded to Microsoft Excel 2019
(Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) spreadsheets
for formatting and transferred to Stata 14 IC (StataCorp,
College Station, TX) for analysis. Descriptive tabulations
and measures of central tendency were calculated for all
questions. Fisher's exact test was conducted to explore
associations between respondents' history of searching for
food safety information on Reddit and their self-reported safe
food handling practices; for these tests, a Bonferroni-adjusted
P-value of <0.008 was used to indicate statistical significance
(0.05 of 6 comparisons). Theoretical constructs were reverse
coded as necessary so that higher values corresponded
with positive outcomes. Mean composite variables were
constructed for all theory-based constructs if Cronbach's
alpha was ≥0.70. Only the TAM credibility construct was
sufficiently reliable; for TPB constructs, individual question
items were used instead of composite constructs. Pairwise
Spearman correlations were conducted between each of these
variables to ensure that none were highly correlated (r ≥ 0.8).
An ordinal regression model was constructed to identify
predictors of participants' intentions to use Reddit in the
following 2 weeks to search for advice about safe food
handling at home. The outcome was a 7-point ordinal
response (very unlikely to very likely). The following
variables were evaluated as potential predictors of this
outcome: age group (18 to 24, 25 to 32, or 33 to 39), gender
(male versus female), country (United States, United
Kingdom, Canada, or other), education (high school, trades,
or other; some college or university; bachelor's degree; or
postgraduate degree), experienced domestic foodborne
illness in past year (yes versus no), food service industry
experience (yes versus no), frequency of using Reddit (daily
versus less often), primary use of Reddit (active versus
passive), history of searching for food safety information
Food Protection Trends - March/April 2021

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