ADVANCEMENT OF THE PRACTICE
races, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawai- ian or Other Pacific Islander, White, or Other. Because the majority of respon- dents identified as White and the num- ber of respondents from all other racial categories was too small to make mean- ingful statistical comparisons, race and ethnicity are reported here as frequencies but were not included in further statisti- cal analyses. • Education was an ordinal category that ranged from less than a high school degree to holding a doctorate degree. Job-Related Factors • Years of experience were measured ordi- nally, meaning that participants chose the predetermined range that most closely aligned with their experience in the field. • Current job level was measured ordinally and ranged from entry to leadership level. • Last retail food safety training was mea- sured ordinally, meaning participants chose which predetermined time range included their most recent food safety training. Relevance and Exposure to Knowledge Areas The survey included measures of partici- pant perceptions surrounding relevance and exposure to knowledge areas from the Inte- grated Food Safety System (IFSS) Food Pro- tection Professionals National Curriculum Framework (Kaml et al., 2013). We focused on the knowledge areas within the National Curriculum Framework because the use of standardized training materials can improve consistency in food safety workforce train- ing throughout the nation. Additionally, these knowledge areas have been validated by professionals in the field and can be customized to dierent training scenarios (Kaml et al., 2013). We first asked participants to rate the rel- evance of each of the 59 knowledge areas to their job duties on a scale of 1 (not relevant) to 4 (very relevant). Participants unfamiliar with the knowledge area had the option to indicate, “I am not familiar with this area.” The relevance measure allowed us to under- stand what knowledge areas participants con- sidered to be important to their work. Next, we measured participant exposure to knowl- edge areas on a scale of 1 (no exposure) to 4 (high exposure). Participants unfamiliar with the knowledge area had the option to indi-
Location Data Provided by Respondents ( n = 1,548) FIGURE 1
# of Participating Jurisdictions
≥61 31–60 11–30 0–10
TABLE 1
Frequencies of Demographic and Job-Related Factors of Respondents ( N = 2,253)
Variable
# (%)
Professional focus area Retail food (human consumption)
1,942 (80.0) 345 (14.2)
Retail food and manufactured food (processed for human consumption) Retail food and unprocessed food (growing or raising for human consumption)
17 (0.7) 125 (5.1)
Retail, manufactured, and unprocessed food Time spent working in retail food safety (years) <1
154 (6.9) 331 (14.8) 340 (15.2) 270 (12.1) 600 (26.8) 543 (24.3)
1–3 4–6 7–9
10–20
>20
Current position
Federal food regulatory official State food regulatory official
51 (2.1)
469 (19.3) 1,856 (76.4)
Local (e.g., county, city) food regulatory official
Tribal food regulatory official
36 (1.5)
U.S. territorial food regulatory official Military or DOD food safety professional
9 (0.4) 8 (0.3)
Job level Entry
581 (25.9) 873 (39.0) 245 (10.9) 541 (24.2)
Journey Technical Leadership
continued
36
Volume 86 • Number 8
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