Guide to Measuring Household Food Security

Measuring Food Security in the United States
United States
Department of
Agriculture
Food and
Guide to Measuring
Nutrition
Service
Household Food Security
Office of

Analysis,
Nutrition, and
Revised 2000
Evaluation
Gary Bickel
Mark Nord
Cristofer Price
William Hamilton
John Cook

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This guidebook was prepared by Gary Bickel, USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), Office of
Analysis, Nutrition, and Evaluation, and Mark Nord, USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), Food
and Rural Economics Division. It incorporates the original work of Cristofer Price and William
Hamilton, Abt Associates, Inc. and John Cook, then of Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty,
and Nutrition Policy and now of Boston University School of Medicine/New England Medical Center:
Guide to Implementing the Core Food Security Module (cited as Price, et al., 1997). The present
Revised Edition benefited from the review and comment of many colleagues, both within the federal
interagency Food Security Measurement Project and among the project's many private-sector
cooperators.
For Additional Information
contact the authors, or:
Office of Analysis, Nutrition, and Evaluation
Food and Nutrition Service, USDA
3101 Park Center Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302
(703) 305-2133
http://www.fns.usda.gov/oane OR
www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/foodsecurity
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Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (202)720-5964 (voice and TDD). USDA is an equal
opportunity provider and employer.

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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security
Revised
March, 2000
Number 6 in the Series
Measuring Food Security in the United States:
Reports of the Federal Interagency Food Security Measurement Project
Revised Edition of Report Number 3,
"Guide to Implementing the Core Food Security Module," September 1997
Office of Analysis, Nutrition, and Evaluation
Food and Nutrition Service, USDA
3101 Park Center Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302
May be cited as: Bickel, Gary, Mark Nord, Cristofer Price, William Hamilton, and John Cook:
Guide to Measuring Household Food Security, Revised 2000. U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Alexandria VA. March, 2000.

Or in short form as USDA,
Guide 2000.

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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION ...................................................................................... iii
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................1
Chapter One
BACKGROUND OF THE HOUSEHOLD
FOOD SECURITY MEASURE...............................................................................5
What is Household Food Security?............................................................................6
Why Measure Food Security? ...................................................................................7
How is Food Security Measured? .............................................................................8
What Is the Household Food Security Scale? ............................................................9
How Is the Household's Food Security Status Determined? .....................................11
How Does the Household Measure Relate to the
Food Security of Individual Household Members? ...............................................13
Uses and Limitations of the Food Security Measure .................................................14
Chapter Two
THE FOOD SECURITY QUESTIONNAIRE CORE MODULE..........................18
Overview of the CPS Food Security Supplement ....................................................18
Questions Included in the Core Module...................................................................20
Using Early Questions to Screen Out Food-Secure Respondents.............................26
Chapter Three IMPLEMENTING THE FOOD SECURITY SCALE AND
THE FOOD SECURITY STATUS MEASURE ....................................................27
Coding Survey Responses for the Food Security Scale ............................................27
Assigning Scale Values to Households with Complete Responses
and Classifying Households by Food Security Status Level..................................30
Imputing Missing Values for Households with Incomplete Responses.......................35
Chapter Four PRELIMINARY GUIDANCE ON SAMPLING LOCAL
POPULATION GROUPS FOR FOOD SECURITY SURVEYS ..........................39
NOTES:
Introduction and Chapter 1 .....................................................................................42
Chapters 2 and 3....................................................................................................44
REFERENCES: Reports of the U.S. Food Security Measurement Project. ..................................45
Recent Literature Referencing the Food Security Measure .................................46
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)
APPENDICES:
Page
Appendix A THE FOOD SECURITY CORE-MODULE QUESTIONNAIRE...........................52
Appendix B
STANDARD 6-ITEM INDICATOR SET FOR CLASSIFYING
HOUSEHOLDS BY FOOD SECURITY STATUS LEVEL ...................................59
Appendix C USING RASCH-MODEL SOFTWARE TO: (1) SCALE HOUSEHOLDS
WITH MISSING ITEMS; (2) ASSESS DATA QUALITY; AND
(3) ASSESS VALIDITY OF THE NATIONAL SCALE
FOR SPECIAL POPULATION GROUPS..............................................................64
Appendix D
FURTHER TECHNICAL NOTES..........................................................................73
EXHIBITS:
Exhibit 2-1
Screening Question and Follow-up Items Not Used in Creating Scale .......................22
Exhibit 2-2
Questions Included in the Food Security Scale ..........................................................23
Exhibit 3-1
Coding Survey Responses for the Food Security Scale ........................................... 28
Exhibit 3-2
Two Measures of Severity of Household Food Insecurity and Hunger .......................31
Exhibit 3-3 Households with Complete Responses: Food Security Scale Values and
Status Levels Corresponding to Number of Affirmative Responses............................34
Exhibit B-1:
Table of Standard Values .........................................................................................62
Exhibit C-1:
Item Calibration Values: 1998 National Benchmark Levels.......................................70
Exhibit C-2:
Alternative Standard Metrics for1998 Scale Values ..................................................71
Exhibit D-1:
Correspondence of Item Numbers in the Core-Module Questionnaire
and the CPS Food Security Supplements..................................................................74
Exhibit D-2:
Comparison of 1995 and 1998 Standard Household Scale Values ............................75
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
Since publication of the Guide to Implementing the Core Food Security Module in 1997 by
the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS, previously Food and Consumer Service) of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA), the standard procedures for measuring food insecurity and hunger have
undergone further refinement and development based on ongoing research within the federal interagency
Food Security Measurement Project. This new edition of the Guide documents minor corrections and
changes, bringing the procedures described in the original publication up to date. These include:
• Small changes in the format of the core-module questionnaire for consistency with the
form adopted in 1998 for standard use in the annual Food Security Supplement to the
Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), and other applications;

• Significant simplification and streamlining of the recommended procedure for scoring
households with partially missing data;

• Revised and corrected scale-score ranges, based on 1998 data, for classifying
households by food security status categories;

• An alternative, simple method of assigning households with complete core-module data
to the food security status-level classifications; and

• Brief information on adapting the measure for particular survey uses.
None of these changes alters the content of the food security core-module questionnaire, the
scaling method underlying the food security scale, or the basic method of classifying households by food
security status level. Consequently, data collections and analyses based on the original Guide and on
this Revised Edition can be fully consistent (although users of the original Guide should note the
corrected and updated scale-score ranges presented here).
USDA actively encourages State- and local-area research and population monitoring
applications of the standard national measure of household food security, as well as continued testing
and validation research on the measure itself. We want to learn about your project and we invite you
to call or email if you have questions, or if we can provide other help.
Mark Nord -- phone: 202-694-5433 fax: 202-694-5642 email: marknord@ers.usda.gov
Gary Bickel -- 703-305-2125 703-305-2576 gary.bickel@fns.usda.gov
The ERS Food Security Briefing Room (www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/foodsecurity) also provides
additional technical information and references.
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
INTRODUCTION
The presence of hunger in American households due to insufficient resources to obtain food has
been a long-standing challenge to U.S. health, nutrition, and social policy. The success of the nation's
nutrition-assistance safety net, beginning with the National School Lunch Program in 1946 and later
under-girded by the Food Stamp Program and special programs for unusually vulnerable groups, has
meant that extreme forms of hunger, common in Third-World countries, have been virtually eliminated in
the United States. However, less severe forms of food insecurity and hunger--deprivation in basic need
for food--are still found within the U.S. and remain a cause for concern. The basic policy tenet was
forcefully stated by the President's Task Force on Food Assistance in 1984:
It has long been an article of faith among the American people that no one in a land so
blessed with plenty should go hungry. ...Hunger is simply not acceptable in our society.1
The Task Force also noted that, up to the time of its Report:
There is no official "hunger count" to estimate the number of hungry people, and so there
are no hard data available to estimate the extent of hunger directly. .... We regret our
inability to document the degree of hunger caused by income limitations, for such lack of
definitive, quantitative proof contributes to a climate in which policy discussions become
unhelpfully heated and unsubstantiated assertions are then substituted for hard information.2
Now the tools do exist to document directly the extent of food insecurity and hunger caused by
income limitations, as these conditions are experienced and reported by American households.
Following the 1984 Task Force Report--indeed, in part stimulated by the report--private-sector
researchers redoubled efforts to develop the kind of direct survey measure that could reliably and
consistently document the extent of U.S. hunger. By the early 1990s, an extensive body of field
experience had been gained and substantial consensus had emerged among nutrition experts on the
sound conceptual and practical bases for such a measure.3 Meanwhile, Congress enacted the National
Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990, asserting the need for better monitoring and
assessment of the nutritional state of the American people. The long-range plan formulated under the
Act by the U. S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (DHHS)
clarified the government's responsibility to help create a sound national measure of food insecurity and
hunger.4 A key requirement was that this measure should be appropriate for standard, consistent use
"throughout the national nutrition monitoring system and at State and local levels" [emphasis added].
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
A federal interagency working group--the Food Security Measurement Project--was formed in
1992 to develop the needed measure, building upon the earlier research and working in close
collaboration with private-sector experts and the U.S. Census Bureau. Throughout this development
process, one objective held firmly in view was to make the final measure appropriate and feasible for
use in locally designed and conducted food-security surveys.
We believe that this objective is achieved with the food-security core survey module, which
currently is being used successfully in local applications throughout the U.S. and Canada. While the
module may seem unduly long and repetitive at first sight, it generally requires less than four minutes of
survey time to administer--under two minutes average in a full population sample with screening--while
offering important strengths not available from single or small sets of indicators. The key strength of the
measure, as explained below, is that its multiple indicator questions capture and distinguish the various
levels of severity throughout the full range of severity with which the phenomenon of food
insecurity/hunger is experienced in U.S. conditions. This feature is critical for accurately assessing the
prevalence of food insecurity because the greater the severity, the less the prevalence and each
separate indicator captures a different degree of severity. The frequency of the various indicators
varies widely depending upon exactly which level of severity each one reflects.
Food insecurity is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon which varies through a continuum
of successive stages as the condition becomes more severe. Each stage consists of characteristic
conditions and experiences of food insufficiency to fully meet the basic needs of household members,
and of the behavioral responses of household members to these conditions. A variety of indicators is
needed to capture the various combinations of food conditions, experiences, and behaviors that, as a
group, characterize each such stage. This is what the 18-item "core module" set of indicators provides.5
The chapters below describe some of the characteristic aspects of the continuum of food insecurity and
hunger, and Exhibit 3-2 (p.32) illustrates graphically the relationship of the food security measure to this
continuum. An even larger, more detailed indicator set than the 18-item standard U.S. food security
scale might do an even better job of measuring the severity of food insecurity/hunger--e.g., it could
distinguish more fully among the various time paths of the experience (cyclical, episodic, prolonged, brief
but intense, etc.) and among the alternative behavioral paths that reveal the various coping strategies that
households employ in attempting to deal with food-resource inadequacy. However, for the main
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
purpose of assessing the prevalence of food insecurity/hunger at each of its several measurable levels of
severity among U.S. households, the 18-item core module has been shown to be a stable, robust, and
reliable measurement tool.
In addition, for circumstances in which limitations on survey time are insurmountable, a standard
6-item subset of the core-module indicator questions also has been developed, designed to capture
reliably the first two thresholds identified in the full continuum measured by the food-security/hunger
scale--i.e., the threshold of identifiable household food insecurity and the threshold of identifiable hunger
among household members. Testing has shown this standard subset (Appendix B) to be significantly
more reliable in classifying households accurately to the appropriate food security status level than
alternative small, idiosyncratic sets of food-security indicators selected on impressionistic or "face-
validity" grounds alone.
Local surveys that employ the systematic, tested, and validated indicator set provided by the
core module for food security measurement, or the reduced standard 6-item partial set, can obtain
findings that are readily interpretable. Such local survey findings can be compared directly with national
and state-level standard benchmark statistics published annually by USDA and with many national- or
regional-level tabulations of population subgroups available in the USDA reports. This food security
benchmark data series is available from the U.S. Census Bureau, by CD-ROM or at the Bureau's web-
site (<www.census.gov> or <http://ferret.bls.census.gov>).
As an additional strength for comparative research with local survey findings, data from the
standard food security Core Module also will be available from several specialized national surveys: the
5-year longitudinal Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD, conducted by the Census Bureau for DHHS,
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
(ECLS, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics),
the USDA Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII), and the DHHS 4th National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-4).
The Core Module has been designed, not only for use in national surveys, but also for local
groups wanting to determine the extent and severity of food insecurity and hunger within their own
communities, using a technically well grounded and tested method to produce local prevalence estimates
comparable with national and state-level standard benchmark figures. Local studies using either the
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Guide to Measuring Household Food Security – 2000
Core Module or the standard 6-item subset can play a key role in documenting the presence of hunger
in the community as measured under standard national practice, in providing a sound base for broader
community needs assessment, and in helping focus attention on unmet food-security needs within the
community. When the Core Module is used to collect data on a periodic basis--as USDA is doing for
national and state levels with the annual Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey--it
also can provide systematic monitoring of the community's progress in addressing the hunger and other
food-security needs within its midst.6
The next section (Chapter 1) presents the background description of food security
measurement, slightly edited, from the 1997 Guide to Implementing the Core Food Security Module.
The second chapter describes the data collected with the core module survey instrument. Chapter 3
gives updated guidance on how to score data collected with the module to produce prevalence
estimates for food insecurity and hunger within the sampled population. The final chapter offers brief
preliminary guidance on procedures for sampling within local population groups to assure that findings
obtained from food-security surveys can be accurately interpreted and to avoid making unsupportable
generalizations from the data collected.
In general, we recommend that any local group planning a food security survey seek to work
cooperatively with university or other resource persons experienced in sample-survey work. Numerous
sampling methods are available that are feasible and that can yield meaningful results, but expertise is
needed to design these methods into your planned survey. Some experienced guidance at the initial
planning and design stage of the study will pay off handsomely in helping to assure that the survey
findings you obtain serve the purposes you intend, and that you and others can make valid
interpretations of the findings.
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