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Measuring Household Food Insecurity Workshop Report, April 2004
There is strong demand among Title II-supported private voluntary organizations for a relatively simple, methodologically rigorous measure of household food security-particularly the access dimension-that can be used to guide, monitor, and evaluate programs. 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. The underlying concept of the HFSS approach is that food insecurity in the United States is a measurable experience that can be described and analyzed to categorize households by level of food insecurity.
Cornell and Tufts Universities, Africare, World Vision and FFH 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.
