The present study was a descriptive and diagnostic type of research. It was designed to study consumers’ awareness regarding the effect of antibiotics used in animal feed on human health. The study was conducted at Mohammad Nagar residential area under Batiaghata Upazila of Khulna district and Nirala residential area of Khulna City Corporation, Khulna, Bangladesh. All the household heads of Mohammed Nagar and Nirala residential areas of Khulna were considered as the population of the study. Forty family heads from each of the residential areas were interviewed purposively as the sample of the study. Thus, the sampling technique was purposive and the sample size stood at 80. The primary data were collected through a face-to-face interview between January-February, 2019. Reviewing related studies, the authors considered some of the selected characters of the respondents as independent variables for the study. The characteristics were age, educational qualification, family size, family education, annual income, exposure to communication media, nutritional knowledge, animal protein consumption behavior, training exposure, and attitude towards antibiotics used in animal feed. Consumers’ awareness regarding the effect of antibiotics used in animal feed on human health was considered as a dependent variable in this study. All qualitative data were converted into quantitative form by means of applying some appropriate scoring technique. In several instances, indices and scales were constructed through the simple accumulation of scores assigned to individuals or patterns of attributes. To determine consumers’ awareness, five statements related to the effects of antibiotics used in animal feed on human health were incorporated in the interview schedule. To strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree were employed against the five statements and a score of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 were employed against the scales respectively. The awareness score of a respondent would range from 5 to 25, where ‘5’ indicate low awareness and ‘25’ indicates high awareness. Based on awareness score, the respondents were categorized into three groups as low awareness (≤8), medium awareness (9-16), and high awareness (>16).
AI = Nsag× 5 + Nag×4 + Nud × 3+ Nda × 2 + Nsda× 1
Where,
AI = Awareness Index
Nsag = Number of respondents rated the impact as strongly agree
Nag = Number of respondents rated the impact as agree
Nud = Number of respondents rated the impact as undecided
Nda= Number of respondents rated the impact as disagree
Nsda= Number of respondents rated the impact as strongly disagree
The awareness index (AI) score would range from 80-400 where 80 indicates low awareness and 400 indicates high awareness on a particular statement regarding the effect of antibiotics used in animal feed on human health. Data were compiled, tabulated, and analyzed based on the objectives of the study. Different statistical treatments such as number, mean, standard deviation, range, minimum, maximum, rank order, and percentage were used to describe the variables. To explore the relationship between variables, Pearson Product and Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficients were used. Data analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 20.