Measuring Food Insecurity and Hunger Phase 1 Report (2005) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 10-17
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From page 10... ...
Food Security Measurement Project, an ongoing collaboration among federal agencies, academic researchers, and private organizations. The measure was developed over the course of several years in response to the National Nutrition Monitoring Act of 1990.
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From page 11... ...
The food insecurity questions -- on whether the household experienced difficulty in meeting basic food needs due to a lack of resources, the severity of food deprivation ranging from "worry about running out of food" to "children ever not eating for a whole day," and ways of augmenting inadequate food resources -- are asked of all households with incomes below 185 percent of the poverty line. Thus households are presumed in USDA's annual statistical reports to be fully food secure only if their annual incomes are higher than 185 percent of the poverty line and they gave no indication of food access problems on preliminary screener questions and are not asked the questions in the food security assessment series.
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From page 12... ...
While the USDA annual reports define the concepts of food security and the three categories of food security that are estimated and reported (food secure, food insecure without hunger, and food insecure with hunger) and provide detail about how they are measured, the terms "food security" and "food insecurity" are relatively new to both policy makers and the public and are sometimes confusing.While the term "hunger" is not new, measurement of hunger and how hunger conceptually fits into food insecurity is not completely clear.
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From page 13... ...
The Economic Research Service of USDA through its Food and Nutrition Research program has need for a review of the conceptualization and methods for measuring food insecurity monitoring, evaluation, and related research purposes and their validity and utility for informing public policy. Promotion of food security is part of the mission of USDA's Food and Nutrition Service,
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From page 14... ...
The specific tasks to be addressed in Phase 1 include: · the appropriateness of a household survey as a vehicle for moni toring on a regular basis the prevalence of food insecurity among the general population and within broad population subgroups, including measuring frequency and duration; · the appropriateness of identifying hunger as a severe range of food insecurity in such a survey-based measurement method; · the appropriateness, in principle and in application, of item re sponse theory and the Rasch model as a statistical basis for mea suring food insecurity; · the appropriateness of the threshold scores that demarcate food insecurity categories -- particularly the categories"food insecure with hunger" and "food insecure with hunger among chil dren" -- and the labeling and interpretation of each category; · the applicability of the current measure of the prevalence of food insecurity with hunger for assessing the effectiveness of USDA's food assistance programs, in connection with the per formance goals pursuant to the Government Performance and Results Act (Public Law 103-62) 1 for the Food and Nutrition Service; and 1The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 seeks to shift the focus of government decision making and accountability away from a preoccupation with the activities that are undertaken, such as grants dispensed or inspections made, to a
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From page 15... ...
In addition, the panel will address and make recommendations on: · the content of the 18 items and the set of food security scales based on them currently used by USDA to measure food inse curity; · how best to incorporate and represent information about food security of both adults and children at the household level; · how best to incorporate information on frequency and dura tion of food insecurity in prevalence measures; · needs and priorities for developing separate, tailored food security scales for population subgroups, for example, house holds versus individuals, all individuals versus children, and the general population versus homeless persons; and · future directions to consider for strengthening measures of food insecurity prevalence for monitoring, evaluation, and related research purposes throughout the national nutrition monitor ing system. To address this two-phase request, CNSTAT appointed a panel of 12 members representing a range of expertise related to the scope of the study.
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From page 16... ...
Wilde; · Item-Response Models and Their Use in Measuring Food Security and Hunger by M.S. Johnson; and · Alternative Construction of a Food Security and Hunger Measure from 1995 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement Data by K
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From page 17... ...
Chapter 2 briefly reviews the background of the development of the food security measure and explains in more detail the concepts and methods used to estimate food security. Chapter 3 addresses the questions posed to the panel and presents the panel's findings to date, conclusions, and interim recommendations.
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