Participant characteristics and learning outcomes: Lessons from international food safety capacity building

The U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires monitoring and evaluating (M&E) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food safety capacity building programs. M&E provides feedback to the agency on the impact of capacity building. This paper evaluates the direct impacts of International Good Agricultural Practices trainings delivered to trainers in Latin American countries from 2013 to 2017 and discusses policy implications. The evaluations consisted of in-class knowledge tests and questionnaires. Analyses of tests scores and improvements and participant characteristics show how specific characteristics affected classroom learning outcomes. The evaluation points to the usefulness of objective measurements and toward the need for close collaboration and communication with country partners on training needs and participant recruitment. The findings suggest that candidate screening could be useful to distribute scarce training resources to trainers who benefit better from the program and thereby facilitate food safety capacity building. The evaluation approach used in this paper is the first step of the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition's (JIFSAN) “Chain of Impacts” M&E framework. The same approach will be used for evaluating the impact of international Produce Safety Rule (PSR) training under FSMA. The approach can be applied more widely to other global food safety capacity building efforts.