Food Protection Trends - January/February 2020 - 18

for those employed in food preparation jobs than for those
employed elsewhere. This hypothesis follows from public
sector requirements of the Food Code-FDA's advice for
reducing risk factors for foodborne illnesses and outbreaks
for restaurants, retail food stores, and other food-serving
operations (26). Nearly all state and local health departments
have adopted FDA's Food Code as their system of regulation
to ensure that food at retail is safe and properly protected and
presented (27).
The Food Code specifies that any food establishment's
owner or owner's agent will have a person in charge who
can demonstrate knowledge of food safety principles to
regulatory authorities by either complying with the Food
Code during inspections, passing an accredited training
program in food protection, or responding to the inspector's
questions about the food operation. At least one employee
is required to be a certified food protection manager, who
has passed a test as part of a certified program. The Food
Code also specifies temperatures for foods received and
provides detailed temperature requirements for storing,
cooking, reheating, holding, thawing, and cooling foods.
Any training that would familiarize a person with the
demands of the Food Code would repeatedly emphasize the
importance of temperature and of verifying temperature with
a thermometer. Even for food service workers who are not
directly involved in monitoring temperatures, the ongoing
monitoring activity in a food service venue would be hard
for other employees to miss. Thus, our hypothesis is that
awareness of the importance of temperature monitoring is
higher in this sub-population than elsewhere.
Using the employment information from the link with the
CPS, this study categorizes employed at-home meal preparers
according to the most food-relevant industries and occupations available: leisure and hospitality, accommodation and
food service, and food preparation and serving. These variables are added to the baseline model to test whether working
in a food service job affects thermometer use at home.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Data
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is a Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) survey conducted by the U.S. Census
Bureau, with the stated purpose of developing nationally
representative estimates of how people age 15 years or
older spend their time (4). The objective of the Eating and
Health Module (EHM), a component of the ATUS, was
to collect data to analyze the relationships among time-use
patterns and eating patterns, nutrition, and obesity; food
and nutrition assistance programs; food-safety practices and
meal preparation; and grocery shopping and food adequacy
(10). In the ATUS, individuals are sampled from the panel of
households that have completed their eighth (final) month
of interviews for the CPS. Those willing to participate are
interviewed one time about how they spent their time from

Food Protection Trends January/February

4:00 a.m. the previous day to 4:00 a.m. of the interview day,
as well as answering other questions about events within
the past seven or 30 days. Since these respondents have
already participated in the CPS, demographic information,
labor force participation information, and some geographic
information is also available.
The ATUS-EHM can be used to focus on the behavior of
individuals who make thermometer use decisions. From 2014
to 2016, the ATUS-EHM asked, "Are you the person who
usually prepares the meals in your household?" Respondents
who answered "yes" or "split it equally with other household
member(s)" were asked whether they had prepared any meals
with meat, poultry, or seafood in the previous seven days and
then asked if they had used a food or meat thermometer when
preparing any of these meals. This is the sub-sample of interest.
For simplicity, this study refers to usual meal preparers or
those who split the task as at-home meal preparers and refers
to the use of a food or meat thermometer as food thermometer
use. Given that the time frame of food thermometer use is
the previous seven days, the responses allow us to estimate
and examine food thermometer use by U.S. at-home meal
preparers during an average week. This follows convention, see
(9), (11), and (12).
This study pooled the 2014-2016 ATUS-EHM data by
combining all three years, resulting in 32,048 completed
interviews by respondents age 15 and over. Of the 32,048
interviews, 23,077 respondents were at-home meal preparers
age 18 and over. Thus, 23,077 unweighted observations are
available for examining at-home meal preparers aged 18 and
over. Of these 23,077 at-home meal preparers, 20,300 had
prepared at least one meal with meat, poultry, or seafood
in the previous seven days. Of these 20,300 meal preparers,
2,499 had used a food thermometer and 17,781 did not;
15 could not recall, and 5 refused to answer. Thus, 20,280
unweighted observations are available for examining the
determinants of thermometer use by at-home meal preparers
who prepared any meal with meat, poultry, or seafood in the
previous seven days.
The CPS uses both a stratified and clustered sampling
procedure; the ATUS follows a similar sampling procedure.
Because of the survey design, variance estimates must be
calculated using replicate weights (WGT1-WGT160).
Additionally, a Fay coefficient set equal to .5 and balanced
repeated replication (BRR) must be used to correctly estimate
standard errors (3, 20). Last, for a pooled sample by year, a
final weight (EUFINLWGT) must be divided by the total
number of days across all years in the pooled sample (2, 3).
Descriptive variables
The ATUS-EHM contains responses that can be used
to examine descriptive characteristics of at-home meal
preparers, including their households, time use and shopping
behaviors, and presence of populations at-risk of foodborne
illness. Available categories to describe at-home meal

Food Protection Trends - January/February 2020

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