Food Insecurity and Hunger in the United States An Assessment of the Measure (2006) / Chapter Skim
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2 History of the Development of Food Insecurity and Hunger Measures
2 History of the Development of Food Insecurity and Hunger Measures
Pages 23-40
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Food insecurity exists in a small proportion of the population, and a smaller proportion experience hunger at some time during a year because they cannot afford enough food (LeBlanc, Kuhn, and Blaylock, 2005)
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. Since the late 1960s, government agencies, academic researchers, nonprofit organizations, and advocacy groups have undertaken many studies to define and measure hunger in the American context, but without any consensus on the definition of hunger or its measurement strategy or estimates of the extent of the problem.
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began to analyze information obtained from the single survey question on the adequacy of household food supplies added since 1977 to its periodic Nationwide Food Consumption Survey. In the late 1980s, a food sufficiency question similar to the one in the Nationwide Food Consumption Surveys, along with other questions on regular access to food supplies adapted from the CCHIP questionnaire, were included by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
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The report contains what have become the consensus conceptual definitions for the terms "food security," "food insecurity," and "hunger," as relevant to the United States and notes the relationship of food insecurity to hunger and malnutrition (Anderson, 1990, pp.
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Implementation of the Ten-Year Plan Beginning in 1992, USDA staff systematically reviewed the existing research literature on the definition and measurement of food insecurity and hunger and on the practical problems of developing a survey instrument for use in sample surveys at the national, state, and local levels. This was the first step toward carrying out the responsibilities under the ten-year plan.
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First National Conference on Food Security Measurement and Research In January 1994, USDA and DHHS sponsored the First National Conference on Food Security Measurement and Research, which brought together a large group of experts from government, academia, and elsewhere who had worked in the area of identifying and measuring hunger and other aspects of food insecurity. This conference focused on issues of measurement and related research.
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. The conference also resulted in a working agreement on several key issues, previously unresolved, as to the best measurement approach for implementation of a measure in national data collection, and the optimal content and form of a food security survey instrument for application at the national level.
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Within the FSS is the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) -- a set of 10 questions for households with no children and 18 questions for households with children -- that is used to calculate the house
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Research Activities on the Food Security Supplement USDA undertook a considerable amount of research after fielding the supplement in 1995. As a condition of the Terms of Clearance for the April 1995 Food Security Supplement to the CPS, the Office of Management and Budget requested that the Census Bureau's Center for Survey Methods Research conduct an evaluation of the supplement questionnaire.
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. Following the collection of the 1996 and 1997 CPS food security data, USDA contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., to use multiple years of data from the FSS to consider empirical issues that had arisen, such
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as the stability of the measurement scale over time, temporal adjustments to the categories for classifying severity of food security, the appropriate methods for assessing changes in the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States, screening issues, and imputation for missing data, among others (see Ohls, Radbill, and Schirm, 2001)
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. The focus of this study was to explore key technical issues related to the FSS, including techniques for the estimation of standard errors, the effect of alternating survey periods between spring and fall for the 19951999 CPS Supplement, and the effect of using different item response theory modeling approaches and software to create the food security scale.
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took a closer look at the measurement of food insecurity and the effect of household variables on measured food insecurity. Using data from the 1995, 1997, and 1999 food security module of the CPS, they evaluated the effects of demographic and survey-specific variables on the food insecurity/hunger scale using a generalized linear model with mixed effects.
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The major themes of highest priority are shown in Box 2-2. USES OF THE HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY SURVEY MODULE IN OTHER SURVEYS The federal food security measurement project has developed standardized questionnaires and methods for producing household summary measures of food security status.
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; · Assessment of the effects of the questionnaire structure, item se quencing, and survey context on response patterns and measured food security levels; and · Determination of research situations appropriate for implementation of abbreviated household food security scales and/or scales with dif ferent time frames such as monthly versus annual. Research Priorities: Applications and Policy · Focus on sampling and research on food insecurity and its conse quences among high-risk groups with chronic health conditions, men tal illness, and other biological vulnerability (especially among the homeless, elderly, and young children)
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· The University of Michigan Panel Survey of Income Dynamics included the household food security survey module in a special supplement on women and children in 1997 and in the full sample beginning in 1999. · The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System included ques tions on food sufficiency in the social context module.
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food security measurement methods.1 These are all nationally representative surveys. Pilot surveys and surveys of targeted populations have been conducted in many other countries.
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In summary, the Food Security Supplement to the CPS is the cornerstone of the Federal Food Security Measurement Project, which began in 1992 to carry out a key task assigned by the Ten-Year Comprehensive Plan, namely, to develop a standard measure of food insecurity and hunger for the United States for use at the national, state, and local levels. A large body of literature has developed from research, both internal and external to USDA and DHHS, covering methodological topics related to the measurement of food security, and the measure has been adapted for use in several other countries.
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