Household Food Consumption

See Also: Food Aid; Food Security; Infant and Child Nutrition; HIV/AIDS; Assessments, Monitoring and Evaluation

Access to and consumption of adequate and appropriate food by households is an important component of food security. Improved access to food and other resources has significant implications for the success of USAID and PVO programs and achievement of measurable relief and development results. For PVOs, measuring access is problematic, due in part to a wide range of interventions and expected outcomes (e.g., improved roads and flow of goods, increased household incomes). Guidance is limited to assisting cooperating sponsor staff increase knowledge, selection, and measurement of access indicators, particularly at the field level. Moreover, existing tools have not been made widely available. Techniques such as 24-hour recall of food intake provide detailed data on food consumption at the household level, but are very time-consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill, both in collection and analysis.

In addition to the indicator guide designed to improve capacity to collect data using 24-hour recall techniques, FANTA is carrying out a set of activities aimed at developing and documenting user-friendly, cost-effective approaches to measure changes in food security, food access, and dietary quantity and quality at the household level. USAID and PVO stakeholders have identified this work as a high priority. The results from technical assistance, facilitation, and operations research will help USAID and its partners better address program monitoring and evaluation in this area and will influence future data collection instruments, such as the Knowledge, Practice, and Coverage (KPC) and Demographic Health Survey (DHS).

		A brief description of each publication is provided below. By choosing the publication title, you are able to read a detailed description and to download the publication.

1. Dietary Diversity as a Measure of Women's Diet Quality in Resource-Poor Areas (2008): Results from Rural Bangladesh Site Simple population-level indicators are needed to assess the quality of women’s diets and to monitor progress in improving diets. FANTA is working with a number of researchers on a Women’s Dietary Diversity Project (WDDP), whose broad objective is to use existing data sets with dietary intake data from 24-hour recall to analyze the relationship between simple indicators of diet diversity–such as those that could be derived from the new Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)–and dietary quality for women. With funding from USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, the WDDP is analyzing data sets from five countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique and the Philippines. The final report for Bangladesh indicates that food group diversity indicators may be a simple and valid option for population-level assessment and for monitoring progress toward improved micronutrient intakes among women of reproductive age.

2. Trigger Indicators and Early Warning and Response Systems in Multi-Year Title II Assistance Programs (2007): USAID's Office of Food for Peace (FFP) and FANTA have published FFP Occasional Paper 5, Trigger Indicators and Early Warning and Response Systems in Multi-Year Title II Assistance Programs to allow Cooperating Sponsors (CSs) a greater degree of flexibility in responding to emerging crises and shocks in their areas of operation without the risk of potentially undermining advances being achieved by development interventions. Occasional Paper 5 is designed to briefly review CSs' experiences with operationalizing trigger indicators (TIs) and early warning and response (EWR) systems to-date, outline the key characteristics of EWR systems and TIs within the Title II-supported multi-year assistance program (MYAP) context, and provide suggestions on how to best operationalize FFP guidance on incorporating EWR mechanisms, including TIs, into MYAPs.

3. Version 3 of Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for Measurement of Food Access: Indicator Guide (2007): FANTA, in collaboration with Cornell and Tufts Universities, has developed a Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) measure and a guide, "Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for Measurement of Food Access: Indicator Guide," with a standardized questionnaire and data collection and analysis instructions. The HFIAS is composed of a set of nine questions that have been used in several countries and appear to distinguish food insecure from food secure households across different cultural contexts. These questions represent universal domains of the experience of insecure access to food that can be used to assign households and populations along a continuum of severity. The information generated by the HFIAS can be used to assess the prevalence of household food insecurity (access component) (e.g., for geographic targeting) and to detect changes in the food insecurity situation of a population over time (e.g., for monitoring and evaluation). The questions can be added to a standard baseline and final evaluation survey. In August 2007, Version 3 of the guide was released. The new version offers an updated questionnaire section.

4. Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) for Measurement of Household Food Access: Indicator Guide, Version 2 and Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning (MAHFP) for Measurement of Household Food Access: Indicator Guide (2006): In light of the need to build consensus on household food access impact indicators, two strategic objective level indicators of household food access (HDDS) and months of inadequate household food provisioning (MIHFP) were identified during the development of USAID Office of Food for Peace (FFP)'s FY05-08 strategy, through a process of consultation and discussion with CSs, researchers, and other technical groups. These two indicators focus on the desired outcome of improved food access - improved household food consumption. FFP will be requiring all new Title II Multi-Year Assistance Programs (MYAP) with improved household food access as an objective to include these indicators in their results frameworks. In addition, a Household Food Insecurity Scale (HFIS) to measure the experience of household food insecurity is being tested for future inclusion as an indicator. These two indicator guides provide background on the indicator as well as guidance on data collection (including questionnaire format) and analysis.

5. Journal of Nutrition Supplement, May 2006: The Journal of Nutrition has been the principal forum for disseminating US-based research on food insecurity scales. It has also published most of the studies dealing with the application of food insecurity scales in developing countries. Publication of the process of developing the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) offers the opportunity to continue this "conversation" by presenting, in one place, one of the most significant advances in food insecurity measurement to emerge over the last decade. The Journal of Nutrition Supplement, published in May 2006, presents the results of the FANTA-led HFIAS initiatives, including: findings of the first studies to develop and validate food insecurity scales from the "ground-up" in a developing country context; findings of the first cross-country study to compare the performance of the same set of food insecurity items in four dramatically different cultures; results of a cross-country review of food insecurity scale applications and its implications for the development of a universal measurement tool; and, status of the process to develop a universal measurement tool.

6. Measuring Household Food Insecurity Workshop II Report, October 2005 (2006): Following the initial 2004 workshop to develop the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for use by Title II and Child Survival and Health programs, a second FANTA workshop was held on October 19, 2005. This workshop was organized for participants to refine the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) questionnaire, suggest approaches for creating meaningful indicators from the HFIAS data, and discuss a process for continued feedback and collaborative field validation of the HFIAS tool.

7. Measuring Household Food Insecurity Workshop Report (2004): During the past four years FANTA has supported activities to validate the US Household Food Security Scale (HFSS) for use in developing countries and test its usefulness as an impact indicator for the access component of food security in program evaluations. Cornell and Tufts Universities, Africare, World Vision and Freedom from Hunger have collaborated with FANTA in implementing these activities. In addition, a range of researchers and food security program managers have used and adapted the USDA approach in a number of countries in order to answer a range of different objectives. As a next step in the effort to develop simple, standardized, questionnaire-based approach to measure household food insecurity, FANTA held a two-day workshop of researchers, practitioners, USAID staff and FANTA staff. Participants at the workshop presented the results of the field validation work and took the initial steps in developing the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for use by Title II and Child Survival and Health programs. This report provides a description of the workshop and its findings.

8. Development and Validation of an Experience-based Tool to Directly Measure Household Food Insecurity Within and Across Seasons in Northern Burkina Faso (2004): FANTA funded two multi-year field validation studies that used the HFSS approach to develop experiential food insecurity scales and validate them primarily as impact indicators for the access component of household food security (see Measuring Food Insecurity: Going Beyond Indicators of Income and Anthropometry below). The objectives of the studies were to develop a household food access measure (Household Food Insecurity Scale: HFIS) based on locally recognized behaviors that distinguish food insecurity in developing countries, test the HFIS's relationship to conventional indicators of food insecurity (such as income or food consumption), and test the HFIS's performance and sensitivity to change related to program impact.

9. Local Capacity Building in Title II Food Security Projects: A Framework (2004): This paper establishes a conceptual framework for local capacity building within food security projects. It is designed to provide Title II policy-makers and cooperating sponsors with a basic reference tool for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects’ capacity building activities at the local level. This framework builds on the USAID food security framework, in which food availability, access and utilization constitute the three pillars of food security.

10. Measuring Household Food Consumption: A Technical Guide (2004): The guide describes the process and procedures for collecting information to assess the food intake requirements of a household and a step-by-step analysis of the food consumed. Appendices present detailed information about analyzing the data.

11. Measuring Food Insecurity: Going Beyond Indicators of Income and Anthropometry (2003): FANTA funded two multi-year field validation studies that used the HFSS approach to develop experiential food insecurity scales and validate them primarily as impact indicators for the access component of household food security (see Development and Validation of an Experience-based Tool to Directly Measure Household Food Insecurity Within and Across Seasons in Northern Burkina Faso above). The objectives of the studies were to develop a household food access measure (Household Food Insecurity Scale: HFIS) based on locally recognized behaviors that distinguish food insecurity in developing countries, test the HFIS's relationship to conventional indicators of food insecurity (such as income or food consumption), and test the HFIS's performance and sensitivity to change related to program impact.

12. Food Access Indicator Review (2003): The measurement of food access is critical to food security programming. However, for most Title II Cooperating Sponsors, determining changes in food access has not been easy, particularly because appropriate indicators are not standardized and are hard to measure and interpret. Guidance and tools to assist in measuring access indicators are limited or not readily available to the field. The objective of this study was to review how Title II Development Assistance Programs designs address food access, assess how Title II PVOs currently monitors and evaluates food access and identify good measurement practices. The results of the review will provide the basis for a follow-on food access monitoring and evaluation guide to be used by CS field staff.

13. Dietary Diversity as a Household Food Security Indicator (2002): Both the report and the technical note describe a user-friendly, cost-effective approach to measuring changes in dietary quantity and quality and feeding behaviors at both the household and individual levels. Dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, appears to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes, particularly when resources for such measurement are scarce. As described in the report, FANTA's subcontractor, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), analyzed ten household data sets (collected in India, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, Kenya and the Philippines) to assess whether dietary diversity can be used as a tool in evaluating the efficacy of food security interventions. The study validated the dietary diversity indicator as a measure of access to food (per capita expenditures) and a measure of consumption (caloric availability at the household level).

14. Building Household Food Security Measurement Tools from the Ground Up (2001): Wolfe and Frongillo's paper explores the potential to develop improved measures of the access component of household food security. The report discusses relevant conceptual and measurement issues and reviews the U.S. approach and examples of efforts in developing countries. It includes an outline of the elements needed to apply this approach, along with operations research needed for developing such experiential-based measures.

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*Please note that links to these sites do not imply that FANTA supports either the organization listed or the views and content presented.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (FIVIMS) [http://www.fivims.net/index.jspx?lang=en]
FIVIMS is an Inter-agency initiative to promote information and mapping systems on food insecurity and vulnerability.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS) [http://www.fao.org/infoods/index_en.stm]
The INFOODS website aims to mobilize resources for improving the quality, quantity and accessibility of food composition data in the developing world. Regional data bases have been prepared and developing countries are able to interchange data with each other.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service [http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsec/default.htm]
Very useful site from Eldis, a gateway to on-line information on development in countries of the South. Coverage includes social, economic, political and environmental issues. Major annual reports of relevant institutions can be accessed as well. The site has a simple search engine, but also features pre-prepared searches on a variety of topics (debt relief, agricultural marketing, etc.) and illustrative stories to put these topics into context.

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