A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of food safety education interventions for consumers in developed countries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Foodborne illness has a large public health and economic burden worldwide, and many cases are associated with food handled and prepared at home. Educational interventions are necessary to improve consumer food safety practices and reduce the associated burden of foodborne illness. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review and targeted meta-analyses to investigate the effectiveness of food safety education interventions for consumers. Relevant articles were identified through a preliminary scoping review that included: a comprehensive search in 10 bibliographic databases with verification; relevance screening of abstracts; and extraction of article characteristics. Experimental studies conducted in developed countries were prioritized for risk-of-bias assessment and data extraction. Meta-analysis was conducted on data subgroups stratified by key study design-intervention-population-outcome categories and subgroups were assessed for their quality of evidence. Meta-regression was conducted where appropriate to identify possible sources of between-trial heterogeneity. RESULTS: We identified 79 relevant studies: 17 randomized controlled trials (RCTs); 12 non-randomized controlled trials (NRTs); and 50 uncontrolled before-and-after studies. Several studies did not provide sufficient details on key design features (e.g. blinding), with some high risk-of-bias ratings due to incomplete outcome data and selective reporting. We identified a moderate to high confidence in results from two large RCTs investigating community- and school-based educational training interventions on behaviour outcomes in children and youth (median standardized mean difference [SMD] = 0.20, range: 0.05, 0.35); in two small RCTs evaluating video and written instructional messaging on behavioural intentions in adults (SMD = 0.36, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.02, 0.69); and in two NRT studies for university-based education on attitudes of students and staff (SMD = 0.26, 95% CI: 0.10, 0.43). Uncontrolled before-and-after study outcomes were very heterogeneous and we have little confidence that the meta-analysis results reflect the true effect. Some variation in outcomes was explained in meta-regression models, including a dose effect for behaviour outcomes in RCTs. CONCLUSIONS: In controlled trials, food safety education interventions showed significant effects in some contexts; however, many outcomes were very heterogeneous and do not provide a strong quality of evidence to support decision-making. Future research in this area is needed using more robust experimental designs to build on interventions shown to be effective in uncontrolled before-and-after studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.042 | 0.103 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.026 | 0.049 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.014 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".