Various investigations into school meals have been made so far, but in most of them many studies have been made on the satisfaction of students as the consumers, whereas some analyses have been made of their protecting parents' satisfaction with the g...
Various investigations into school meals have been made so far, but in most of them many studies have been made on the satisfaction of students as the consumers, whereas some analyses have been made of their protecting parents' satisfaction with the general operation, which are not actually diverse due to lack of study. This study, hereupon, aims at seeking a plan for improving the parents' confidence through learning by participating in school meals and providing the basic material for improving the meals qualitatively.
For it, focusing on elementary and middle schools providing meals under GUNPO Office of Education in Gyeonggi-do, I made participation and questionnaire surveys to 93 parents consisting of 46 parents of middle school students and 47 parents of elementary school students in two middle schools and two elementary schools as directly managed cooking schools which operate urban type school meals located in a city.
The findings of this study are summarized as follows.
For confidence in the general operation of school meals, they, as parents of students, showed an overall higher confidence after they participated in the meals in elementary and middle schools than before they did so. They, as the subject of survey, had a high confidence in the operation after they participated in the meals and had a high level of confidence after they did so compared to the level before they did so in the elementary schools. It was confirmed that participating in school meals could increase the confidence. Also, they had a higher level of satisfaction after they participated in the meals than before they did so in origin marks related to inspecting food material, disinfection of a cooking room, arrangement in food storehouse, and sanitation of sewerage in the room. It could closely be examined, therefore, that parents' participation in school meals could increase their satisfaction with and confidence in them.
For the change of the response to questionnaire before and after the participation, the response to confidence in the operation changed from "I don't know", "No confidence" or "Unsatisfied" before the participation to high levels of "Very confident" and "Confident" after the participation. Among them "Very confident" occupied the highest response. For satisfaction with the packaged condition of food material, all of them changed their response from "Unsanitary" before the participation to "Sanitary" after it. For satisfaction with the disinfected condition of a cooking room, there was no change in the frequency of the response of "Thorough" before and after the participation.
For the disinfected condition of sanitary utensils, a high change occurred from no disinfection before the participation to very thorough disinfection after it. For the necessity of participating and itinerant activities in inspecting food material, they showed a high level of response that they were necessary after the participation.
Also, for confidence in the operation according to whether they are experienced in participating in school meals, a higher percentage of those experienced responded that they were very confident than those inexperienced before the participation, which showed that those experienced had a somewhat higher level of confidence. Also, for general satisfaction with school meals according to whether they are experienced in participating in school meals, they showed a higher level of satisfaction after the participation than before it. It could closely be examined, therefore, that parents' participation in the meals could increase their satisfaction with and confidence in them. Thus, I expect that this study will be used as the basic material by which parents can heighten their confidence in and satisfaction with school meals by participating in the meals. I think that the basic study in this field will be more necessary.