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New Approaches for Measuring Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale
There is strong demand among Title II food aid program managers for a relatively simple, methodologically rigorous measure of household food insecurity - particularly the access component - that can be used to guide, monitor, and evaluate programs. In response to this demand, FANTA has undertaken a set of activities to identify a scientifically validated, simple, and more user-friendly approach for measuring the impacts of Title II programs on the access component of household food insecurity. As a result of these activities, FANTA, in collaboration with Cornell and Tufts Universities, has developed a Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) measure and a guide, "Version 3 of 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.
The process of developing the HFIAS was one of consultation, research and consensus building that has brought together academics, program managers, governments and donors. The process consisted of the following:
Multi-year field validation studies [Bangladesh, Burkina Faso]
Literature review of different uses of the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Measure (HFSSM)
Consultation through workshops and review of the draft guide
Production of a Background Paper
One of the first steps in the process was the production of a paper, "Building Household Food Security Measurement Tools from the Ground Up," that explored the potential to develop improved measures of the access component of household food security. The paper discussed relevant conceptual and measurement issues and reviewed the U.S. approach and examples of efforts in developing countries. It included an outline of the elements needed to apply the U.S. approach, along with field research needed to develop such experiential-based measures in other contexts.
Multi-year Field Validation Studies [Bangladesh, Burkina Faso]
In the next phase of the process, two multi-year field validation studies were undertaken that used the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Measure (HFSSM) approach to develop and validate experiential household food insecurity (access) scales. The studies were implemented by FANTA partners Cornell University in the Title II food security program areas of Africare in Burkina Faso and by Tufts University in the Title II food security program areas of World Vision in Bangladesh. The objectives of the studies were to develop a household food access measure (Household Food Insecurity Scale: HFIS) based on locally recognized experiences 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 changes related to program impact.
The Burkina Faso study (see "Development and Validation of an Experience-based Tool to Directly Measure Household Food Insecurity Within and Across Seasons in Northern Burkina Faso") and Bangladesh study (see "Measuring Food Insecurity: Going Beyond Indicators of Income and Anthropometry") showed that the HFSSM approach to developing experiential household food insecurity scales could be applied successfully in developing country contexts in situations of chronic food insecurity. The food insecurity questionnaire proved to be a simple tool that could be used in these settings by organizations to assess, evaluate, or monitor the access component of household food insecurity. Both studies found that the HFIS not only measured the prevalence of food insecurity, but also gave an indication of its severity and how that may change over time.
Collaboration with Freedom from Hunger
FANTA also provided support to Freedom from Hunger (FFH) efforts to test whether the US HFFSM approach could be used as a low-cost and meaningful poverty measure that would be applicable in diverse settings. These studies were conducted in Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Ghana and the Philippines. The results of these studies will be published in a Journal of Nutrition Supplement in May 2006.
Literature Review of Different Uses of the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Measure (HFSSM)
FANTA then carried out a review of how the U.S. HFSSM has been adapted and used to look at food insecurity in a variety of countries (see "Experience and Expression of Food Insecurity Across Cultures: Practical Implications for Valid Measurement"). The literature review summarized recent work by field practitioners and academics to develop instruments based on the U.S. HFSSM, to measure food insecurity in developed and developing countries. A total of 21 different uses of the U.S. HFSSM were reviewed. The findings of the review were presented at the first FANTA workshop in April 2004.
Consultation Through Workshops and Review of the Draft Guide
FANTA held two workshops to get input from potential users of the HFIAS, including practitioners, academics, government agencies and donors. In addition, drafts of the guide were distributed and valuable feedback received from a range of individuals and organizations.
The first workshop, on April 15-16 2004, aimed to arrive at a consensus on the feasibility of developing a universally applicable Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and to define the domains and questions that would form part of a standardized questionnaire. For more information, see "Measuring Household Food Insecurity Workshop Report, April 2004."
Based on the results of this workshop, as well as ongoing research at Tufts and Cornell Universities, a draft guide with a standardized questionnaire and data collection and analysis instructions was written and shared with programmers, academics and other interested stakeholders in June 2005. Feedback on the draft guide was received from a range of potential users.
A second FANTA workshop was held on October 19, 2005 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. For more information, see "Measuring Household Food Insecurity Workshop II Report, October 2005."
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 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
status of the process to develop a universal measurement tool
The six articles in the supplement convey the participatory, consultative and collaborative process among donor, academic, and programming institutions that has resulted in: 1) scientifically validated food insecurity scales; 2) structured feedback about the usefulness of the tools in operational settings; 3) consensus about particular aspects of the tool that, as in the U.S., rely on "expert opinion" for face validity.
Go to links to the free articles of the Journal of Nutrition Supplement, May 2006
In addition to work on the HFIAS, FANTA has led an effort to identify additional indicators of the access component of household food insecurity that are simple to use and to develop methods to support the consistent and comparable measurement and reporting of these indicators. Two indicators have been identified as a result of this process, which included extensive input by Title II implementing partners: household dietary diversity score and months of inadequate household food provisioning. Guides have been developed for these indicators that provide a standardized questionnaire with data collection and analysis instructions: