food security analysis techniques

1. CHAPTER FOUR
4. LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD
SECURITY/INSECURITY ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

2. 4.1 Potential Indicators of Household Food Security
a. Demographic Indicators
i. Household size and composition
• A household’s size or composition is not static, but
changes with biological lifecycle; while adjustment
of household size or composition to recurrent food
insecurity is a common strategy during prolonged
economic crisis the trend is toward smaller
consumption units.
• On the other hand the larger/extended
households are more likely than smaller/nuclear
households to be associated with greater
diversification of assets, income sources and crop
cultivation, and less vulnerable to illness or death
of.

3. • But the poorest households tend to have large
young families; while households with female
heads are often, but not always, disadvantaged.
ii. Migration
• There are seasonal migrations of able-bodied adults
prior to or during peak agricultural labor periods
and during dry seasons.
• However, the distress migration of whole families is
usually the last in a sequence of household
responses and a clear indication that other coping
strategies failed.
• Migration in search of wage labor to enhance food
security of households could be predicted six
months in advance amongst some Rural Ethiopians.

4. iii. Ethnicity and region
• Certain tribes, communities, ethnic, or caste
groups may be historically or geographically
more vulnerable to seasonal or chronic food
insecurity.
• This is because welfare levels often vary
distinctly by region, community or tribes.

5. b. Market Indicators
i. Income sources, changes in income and income flow
• The distribution of income sources within a given
community may be U-shaped implying that income
diversification has different purposes and
consequences for the most and least vulnerable.
• Smallholders in farming spread risks through
diversification of income sources most notably off-
farm employment.
• Otherwise, the riskier the environment, the more
diverse economic activities relied upon will be;
while the source and / or control of income may be
more important than total income in influencing
household- level of food security.

6. • The transition from subsistence to cash-cropping is
associated with increased vulnerability and
malnutrition among children and with increased
household caloric intake or increased food
expenditures.
• The effect of commercialization of semi- subsistence
agriculture on food consumption and nutritional
status of vulnerable group has shown mixed results.
• On the flow of income the income received
seasonally in large sums will more likely be spent on
lump-sum expenditures or consumer goods than on
improved diets and other nutrition-related
investments.

7. ii. Access to credit or loans
• It has been noted that access to credits or loans is
very instrumental to well-being of a given household.
• This is because arising from these opportunities
members of households can have access to acquire
the available food in the market or food supply
system.
• Also observed is that access to traditional lines of
credit through merchants’ collapses as collateral (for
example livestock) disappears, especially during
drought.
• Studies observed that nearly half of south Indian
households took loans during a particular drought, as
most people felt the act of possessing loans was a
considerable factor in maintaining minimum living
conditions.

8. iii. Land ownership and control
• Number of different plots may be a more sensitive
indicator than total acreage since households with
fragmented landholdings can take advantage of
different micro-climates more than households
with larger but often less diverse.
• And access to seasonally flooded lowlands is an
important buffering mechanism in drought-prone
areas because of the moisture conditions of the
soil to enhance possible farming activities in the
region so as to sustain food security of the
households.

9. iv. Land use practices
• Access to good quality land and alternative
employment sources may be more important in
determining nutritional status of rural households
than choice of crop.
• Intensification of land use practices is one of the
responses in a sequence of adjustment to stress by
farmers as intercropping, multiple seed strains with
different maturation periods/resistance to disease
and braced mixture of available cultivars are
important diversification strategies of African
farmers to minimize risk of crop failure and
enhance food security.

10. • Also as a result of land use, access to reserves
of trees can significantly decrease the poor’s
vulnerability to unforeseen event.
• The percentage of cultivated land with planted
tree crops can be used as a proxy for agro-
climate conditions, which is positively
associated with high yield of food.

11. iv. Sales of property (land, livestock, assets and food)
• Distress sale of land is a desperate measure and
tends to occur much later in the belt tightening
process.
• But if land is a household’s only asset it will only
be sold if there is no other way to survive and
often the land is first mortgaged.
• The ability to market livestock for grain commonly
determines who will survive a famine and who will
not.
• In addition, the sale of male animals before their
optimum weight or of females before the end of
their reproductive period is an indicator of food
insecurity, although indicators related to livestock
sales, prices or market demand/supply are
sometimes due to over-stocking of livestock.

12. • Thus livestock sales occur normally, which do not
necessarily imply a reduction of future
productivity.
• Successfully surviving drought depends upon a
household’s ability to retain intact all its productive
assets (including family labor supply) solely by
cutting back on ceremonial forms of consumption
and by liquidating non-productive assets.
• Poor people became poorer by disposing of
productive assets but it is important to distinguish
sales of key assets from sale of assets which are
primarily forms of insurance/ saving.

13. v. Capital equipment and other valuables
• The number or diversity of assets may be a
more useful indicator than net worth of assets:
households with low number and diversity of
productive assets may be more vulnerable to
external shock and contingencies.
• But low asset status is not necessarily
synonymous with greatest poverty.
• Otherwise some landless peasants actually
owned valuable goods which they hire out, e.g.
tractors and sewing machines as in the case of
Tanzania.

14. • Wells as source of water for farming are crucially
important assets to farmers for producing a
regular grain surplus to ascertain food security in
households as was in the case of Mali.
• Diversified herds with different pasture needs are
less vulnerable to drought and infection than
more homogenous herds that may produce more
meat and milk.
• The importance is not between small versus large
herds, but between owning no animals, at all and
having at least some as a security while access to
milk is indicated by having a female animal.

15. • Donkeys, mules and oxen are highly valued
during famine and drought because they help
perform valuable duties; and lack of access to
these resources, primarily oxen made women
particularly vulnerable to drought as was in
the case of Ethiopia.
• Owning consumer durables/semi-durables by a
household to avoid borrowing from relatives
or neighbors also determines security of a
household as was observed amongst Indian
women.

16. c. Proximate Indicators
i. Ill-health
• The main asset of most poor people is their
physical bodies; and all producers are
vulnerable to sickness and disability.
• Work disabling accidents and or morbidity of
household’s breadwinners are often the pivotal
events which impoverish households making
illness and ill-health useful indicators to
influence food availability and accessibility
within a household.

17. ii. Education
• Very few households with at least one
educated member starve as a result of food
insecurity.
• Women’s schooling, even after adjusting for
income has a higher elasticity of nutrients
demand than those for household size or
income; while years of child schooling could
be used as a proxy measure for household’s
living standards.

18. iii. Food stores
• Ability to store food post harvest and
availability of stored food pre-harvest are
important indicators to monitor household
food security.
• At the same time having two years household
consumption requirements in store is seen as
desirable for sustainability of a household
food security as was in the case of Sudan.
• Otherwise estimates of number of months
stored grain will last are usually more accurate
and culturally sensitive than asking farmers for
volume estimate of stored quantity.

19. iv. Qualitative dietary changes
• Shifting from preferred nutritious diets for growth
and development to lowered status and
unconventional foods e.g. starchy grains (maize
and rice grains) are a normal occurrence in areas
facing seasonal food deficits, but this may also
indicate anticipated stress expected during the
season.
• Otherwise local sharing between families or
households often intensifies when food is scarce.
• It has also been noted that the importance and
intensity of wild food use depends upon severity
and length of food shortage, and to some extent
the location of house labour to collect them.

20. • Households producing for auto-consumption
are more likely to have greater dietary
diversity than households producing primarily
for market.
• It is also noted that the correlation between
dietary diversity and socio-economic status is
positive and both are essentially precondition
to food security.

21. v. Quantitative dietary changes
• Fluctuations in consumption of main staples or
in meal patterns are indicative of food
insecurity in households.
• Otherwise food consumption reduction is part
of a deliberate and early strategic household’s
response to scarcity and insecurity of food,
while the number of meals per day is not a
useful indicator of food security as was found
out in Chad and Mali as missed meals do not
necessarily imply food unavailability due to
frequent eating outside the home or at work as
was observed in India.

22. 4.2 Techniques of Food In/Security Analysis
• Despite long-standing efforts to improve the
food security situation of populations globally,
food deprivation and its physical consequences
remain a continuing problem in resource-poor
areas throughout the world.
• FAO estimated that, in 2010 alone, 925 million
people worldwide did not have access to
sufficient food to meet their dietary energy
requirements.
• Arguably, one of the first steps to effectively
addressing food insecurity is to establish
reliable methods for measuring it.

23. • In the absence of reliable measurement, it is
not possible to target interventions
appropriately, to monitor and evaluate
programs and policies, or to generate lessons
learned to improve the effectiveness of these
efforts in the future.

24. 4.2.1 Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS)
• HFIAS is used to estimate the prevalence of
food insecurity.
• The method is based on the idea that the
experience of food insecurity (access) causes
predictable reactions and responses that can
be captured and quantified through a survey
and summarized in a scale.
• The higher the score, the more food insecurity
(access) the household experienced. The lower
the score, the less food insecurity (access) a
household experienced.

25. • Qualitative research with low-income households
provided insight into the following ways that
households experience food insecurity (access):
– Feelings of uncertainty or anxiety over food (situation,
resources, or supply);
– Perceptions that food is of insufficient quantity (for
adults and children);
– Perceptions that food is of insufficient quality (includes
aspects of dietary diversity, nutritional adequacy,
preference);
– Reported reductions of food intake (for adults and
children);
– Reported consequences of reduced food intake (for
adults and children); and
– Feelings of shame for resorting to socially
unacceptable means to obtain food resources.

26. • The eighteen-question U.S. Household Food
Security Survey Module (US HFSSM) asks
respondents to describe behaviors and
attitudes that relate to these various aspects,
also called ‘domains’, of the food insecurity
experience.
• For example, a question relating to
perceptions of insufficient quantity asks
whether any adults had to eat less than they
thought they should.
• The uncertainty-related questions include one
about whether the respondent worried that
the household’s food would run out.

27. • Responses to the US HFSSM are summarized in
a scale to provide a continuous indicator of the
degree of a household’s food insecurity.
• Cut-off points on the scale enable categorical
classification of whether households are food
secure or not.
• These data are used to monitor food assistance
programs and to report on national prevalence
of household food insecurity.
SEE TABLE 1 on page 9 and 10 _Handout

28. • The Household Food Insecurity Access
Prevalence (HFIAP) indicator categorizes
households into four levels of household food
insecurity (access): food secures, mild,
moderately and severely food insecure.
• Households are categorized as increasingly food
insecure as they respond affirmatively to more
severe conditions and/or experience those
conditions more frequently.

29. • A food secure household experiences none of
the food insecurity (access) conditions, or just
experiences worry, but rarely.
• A mildly food insecure (access) household
worries about not having enough food
sometimes or often, and/or is unable to eat
preferred foods, and/or eats a more
monotonous diet than desired and/or some
foods considered undesirable, but only rarely.

30. • A moderately food insecure household
sacrifices quality more frequently, by eating a
monotonous diet or undesirable foods
sometimes or often, and/or has started to cut
back on quantity by reducing the size of meals
or number of meals, rarely or sometimes.
• But it does not experience any of the three
most severe conditions.

31. • A severely food insecure household has
graduated to cutting back on meal size or
number of meals often, and/or experiences
any of the three most severe conditions
(running out of food, going to bed hungry, or
going a whole day and night without eating),
even as infrequently as rarely.
• In other words, any household that
experiences one of these three conditions
even once in the last four weeks (30 days) is
considered severely food insecure.

32. 4.2.2 Household Food Consumption Score (FCS)
• The Food Consumption Score (FCS) is a
composite score based on dietary diversity,
food frequency, and the relative nutritional
importance of different food groups.
• The FCS is calculated using the frequency of
consumption of different food groups
consumed by a household during the 7 days
before the survey.
• Scores are clustered into three groups; the
results of the analysis categorize each
household as having either poor, borderline, or
acceptable food consumption.

33. • Dietary diversity is defined as the number of
different foods or food groups eaten over a
reference time period, not regarding the
frequency of consumption.
• Food frequency, in this context, is defined as the
frequency (in terms of days of consumption over a
reference period) that a specific food item or food
group is eaten at the household level.
• Food group is defined as a grouping of food items
that have similar caloric and nutrient content.
• Food item cannot be further split into separate
foods.
• However, generic terms such as ‘fish’ or ‘poultry’
are generally considered to be a food items for
the purpose of this analysis.

34. • Condiment, is this context, refers to a food that is
generally eaten in a very small quantity, often just
for flavor.
• An example would be a ‘pinch’ of fish powder, a
teaspoon of milk in tea, spices, etc.
• Uses: This composite score, measuring food
frequency and dietary diversity, can be used in a
variety of ways, including to:
– Compare food consumption across geography and time.
– Target households in need of food assistance.
– Monitor seasonal fluctuations in food consumption.
– Provide key diet information to early warning analyses.

35. Calculation of the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and
Food Consumption Groups (FCGs)
Calculation steps:
I. Using standard Vulnerability Analysis Mapping (VAM) 7-
day food frequency data, group all the food items into
specific food groups (see groups in table below).
II. Sum all the consumption frequencies of food items of
the same group, and recode the value of each group
above 7 as 7.
III. Multiply the value obtained for each food group by its
weight and creates new weighted food group scores
IV. Sum the weighed food group scores, thus creating the
food consumption score (FCS).
V. Using the appropriate thresholds (see below), recode
the variable food consumption score, from a continuous
variable to a categorical variable.

36. Table 2: Standard Food Groups with current standard weights
FOOD ITEMS (examples) Food groups
(definitive)
Weight
(definitive)
(X)
Consumption
frequencies
(Y)
Multiply weight with
consumption
frequencies
(X * Y)
1 Maize , maize porridge, rice, sorghum,
millet pasta, bread and other cereals
Main
staples
2
Cassava, potatoes and sweet potatoes,
other tubers, plantains
2 Beans. Peas, groundnuts and cashew nuts Pulses 3
3 Vegetables, leaves Vegetables 1
4 Fruits Fruits 1
5 Beef, goat, poultry, pork, eggs and fish Meat and
Fish
4
6 Milk yogurt and other diary Milk 4
7 Sugar and sugar products, honey Sugar 0.5
8 Oils, fats and butter Oil 0.5
9 Spices, tea, coffee, salt, fish power, small
amounts of milk for tea.
Condiments 0

37. • Once the food consumption score is calculated,
the thresholds for the FCGs should be
determined based on the frequency of the
scores and the knowledge of the consumption
behavior in that country/region.
• The Food Consumption Score (FCS) is a proxy
indicator of household food security based on
the weighted frequency (no. of days in a week)
of intake of 8 different food groups.
• It is measured as:
FCS= a1x1+ a2x2+ …+ a8x8 , Where i = food group,
x = frequency,
a = weight

38. • The typical thresholds are:
FCS Profiles
Food Consumption Score
(FCS)
Profiles
0-21 Poor
21.5-35 Borderline
> 35 Acceptable

39. Advantages of FCS
• A standardized and more transparent
methodology.
• A repeatable data analysis within a dataset
(one analyst can easily reproduce the FCS on a
dataset identical to that created on the same
dataset by another analyst).
• A comparable analysis between data sets (this
does not imply that the score has the same
meaning for all households in all contexts).
• The FCS is also able to capture both Dietary
Diversity and Food frequency.

40. Limitations of FCS
• Doesn’t tell us the ‘food gap’ i.e. how much
food is lacking in the diet as it doesn’t track
quantities
• Doesn’t account for individual nutritional
requirements or seasonal variations
• Needs to be adapted to local contexts
• Often underestimates levels of food insecurity
when compared against other food security
indicators

41. 4.2.3 Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS)
• Dietary diversity (DD) relates to nutrient adequacy
(coverage of basic needs in terms of macro-
nutrients which include oxygen, hydrogen, carbon,
and an array of minerals and micro nutrients
which consist of cobalt, chlorine, boron, iron, zinc,
nickel, manganese, and copper) and to diet
variety/balance, which are two of the main
components of diet quality.
• DD is thought to reflect the adequate intake of
essential nutrients either at the household level
(HDD), in which case it can be measured by a HDD
score (HDDS) or by a Food Consumption Score
(FCS), or at the individual level (IDD), in which case
it can be measured by an IDD score (IDDS).

42. • DD is assessed through different scores that are derived
from questionnaires.
• Examples of these questionnaires can be found at the
following address:
http://www.foodsec.org/tools_nut.htm DD scores are
defined as the number of foods or food groups consumed
by an individual (IDDS) or by any member of the
household inside the home (HDDS) over a reference time
period.
• The recommended reference time period is the last 24
hours. Food grouping can be different according to
objectives, putting emphasis on energy-dense foods or
micronutrient-rich foods.
• In most cases, the final number of food groups varies
from 5 to 14, depending on the main characteristic of the
diet that the score intend to reflect (i.e. energy or
micronutrient adequacy).

43. • Dietary diversity can be measured at the
household or individual level through use of a
questionnaire.
• Most often it is measured by counting the number
of food groups rather than the food items
consumed.
• Knowing that households consume, for example,
an average of four different food groups implies
that their diets offer some diversity in both macro-
and micronutrients.
• This is a more meaningful indicator than knowing
that households consume four different foods,
which might all be cereals.

44. • The following set of 12
food groups is used to
calculate the HDDS:
A. Cereals
G. Fish and seafood
B. Root and tubers
H. Pulses/legumes/nuts
C. Vegetables
I. Milk and milk products
D. Fruits
J. Oil/fats
E. Meat, poultry, offal
K. Sugar/honey
F. Eggs
L. Miscellaneous

45. 4.2.5 Coping Strategy Index (CSI)
• Coping strategies are defined as a response to
adverse events or shocks.
• According to Snel and Staring (2001) coping
strategies refer to “all the strategically selected
acts that individuals and households in a poor
socio-economic position use to restrict their
expense or earn some extra income to enable
them to pay for the basic necessities (food,
clothing, shelter) and not fall too far below
their society’s level of welfare”

46. • Ellis (2000) defines coping strategies as the
methods used by households to survive when
confronted with unanticipated livelihood failure.
• The strategies pursued by households differ in
several aspects, that is, within the household and
between households.
• Due to varying degrees of wealth among
households, different coping behaviors are
adopted by households at different poverty
levels.
• In areas where households experience recurrent
shocks to food security, such as regular periods of
drought, household response is not arbitrary.

47. • Such coping strategies include, but are not
limited to:
– collection of wild foods;
– migration in search of employment;
– altering horticulture practices;
– selling household assets, such as livestock or other
possessions;
– and rationing available food.

48. • The Coping Strategy Index (CSI) has been used
to monitor household food security in
emergencies as well as to assess the impact of
various food aid interventions.
• The CSI measures frequency and severity of a
household’s coping strategies for dealing with
shortfalls in food supply.
• Data are weighted according to frequency and
perceived severity of behavior, determined by
community members in focus groups.

49. • Weighted scores are combined into an index
that reflects current and perceived future food
security status.
• Comparison of scores and averages provides a
summary of overall household food security and
establishes a baseline for monitoring drought
trends and impact of interventions.

50. • The coping strategies index includes four categories
of strategies: consumption, expenditure, income,
and migration.
1. Consumption strategies include:
– buying food on credit,
– relying on less-preferred maize substitutes,
– reducing the number of meals eaten per day,
– regularly skipping food for an entire day,
– eating meals comprised solely of vegetables,
– eating unusual wild foods,
– restricting consumption of adults so children can eat
normally, and
– feeding working members at the expense of nonworking
members.

51. 2. Expenditure strategies include:-
– avoiding health care or
– education costs in order to buy food.
3. Income strategies include:-
– selling household and
– livelihood assets such as livestock.
4. Migration strategies include:-
– sending children to relatives’ or friends’ homes or
– migrating to find work.

52. • The CSI is an inverse measure.
• Increased use of coping strategies indicates a
decrease in food security.
• Likewise, a decrease in food security results in
increased frequency and severity of coping
strategies.
• Thus, an analysis of coping strategies indicates a
decreasing food security situation when coping
strategies accelerate from temporary measures
(e.g., reduction in number or quality of meals for a
brief, defined time period) from which a household
can recover to measures that undermine future
lives and livelihoods and damage social, financial,
physical, or natural assets irreversibly.

53. Measuring the Coping Strategy Index
• The Coping Strategy Index (CSI), a tool developed
by the World Food Programme, is commonly used
as a proxy indicator for access to food.
• It is a weighted score that allows one to measure
the frequency and severity of coping strategies.
Data collection
• Data is collected on the number of days in the last
thirty days a household used a specific coping
strategy due to a shortage of food and/or income.
• A thirty day recall period is used to make the CSI as
precise as possible.
• It allows to capture information on as many coping
strategies as possible, especially the most severe.

54. • As coping strategies are complex behaviors,
which are inherently context and time specific,
the list of coping strategies used was
determined and ranked by the local
community.
• During a series of Focus Groups Discussions
(FGDs), women were asked to name coping
strategies used due to a shortage of food or
money to buy food.
• The final list was developed using those which
had been the most frequently mentioned.
• A separate set of FGDs were conducted to
establish their severity.

55. Table 4: shows the list of coping strategies in the chars context
used to calculate the CSI a long with their severity.
Order Coping Strategies
1 Reducing quantity of food
2 Collecting wild vegetables (spinach)
3 Eating twice a day
4 Mother skips a meal/ eats less for children
5 Reducing quality of food
6 Taking money from savings
7 Taking food loan
8 Selling hens and ducks
9 Eating rice with salt and/or chilies
10 Eating once a day
11 Selling goats and sheep
12 Taking money loan with interest to buy food

56. Calculating the CSI
• The CSI of a household is calculated by multiplying the
frequency of coping strategies used in the last thirty
days with their respective severity weights.
• The sum of the scores is then used to determine the
CSI (see table 5)

57. Table 5: Calculating a household’s CSI
Due to a shortage of food and income, how many days in the last 30 days did any household member ………?
Coping strategy Number of days Severity weight Frequency X weight
Reducing quantity of food 20 1 20
Collecting wild vegetables (spinach) 30 2 60
Eating twice a day 15 3 45
Mother skips a meal 15 4 60
Reducing quality of food 0 5 0
Taking money from savings 3 6 18
Taking food loan 0 7 0
Selling hens and ducks 1 8 8
Eating rice with salt and/or chilies 10 9 90
Eating once a day 5 10 50
Selling goats and sheep 1 11 11
Taking money loan with interest to buy
food
0 12 0
Total CSI 362

58. • The higher the CSI, the more food insecure a
household is, as a household is using coping
strategies more frequently and/or more severe
ones.

59. 4.2.5 Household Hunger Scale (HHS)
• The HHS is a household food deprivation scale.
The approach used by the HHS is based on the
idea that the experience of household food
deprivation causes predictable reactions that
can be captured through a survey and
summarized in a scale.
• This approach sometimes referred to as an
“experiential” or “perception-based” method
of collecting data.

60. • The HHS is most appropriate to use in areas of
substantial food insecurity. In those settings, the HHS can
be used for a variety of objectives, including to:
– Monitor the prevalence of hunger over time across
countries, or regions, to assess progress towards meeting
international development commitments
– Assess the food security situation in a country, or region, to
provide evidence for the development and implementation
of policies and programs that address food insecurity and
hunger
– Monitor and evaluate the impact of anti hunger policies and
programs, including those that are funded by a specific
donor across a number of cultures and countries
– Provide information for early warning or nutrition and food
security surveillance
– Inform standardized food security/ humanitarian phase
classifications

61. • To collect HHS data, it is very important that the full set
of HHS questions be used.
• Project staff should not pick and choose certain HHS
questions for inclusion in the questionnaire, because it is
the set of HHS questions—not the use of each HHS
question independently—that has been validated as a
meaningful measure of household food deprivation.
• In addition, a 4-week (30-day) recall period should always
be used for collecting HHS data. It is not recommended to
use a different recall period for several reasons.
• Longer recall periods pose a risk of measurement bias due
to problems with accurate recall over an extended period
of time, and a recall period shorter than 4 weeks (30 days)
may not capture the full extent of the deprivation
experience, since fluctuations of food accessibility are
common within a month.

62. • It is important to note that the HHS focuses on
the food quantity dimension of food access and
does not measure dietary quality.
• Additionally, because the HHS is a household
level indicator, it does not capture data on food
availability or food utilization, which are other
components of food security typically measured
at the national level (availability) and individual
level (consumption/utilization).

63. • Ideally, the HHS should not be used as a unique,
stand-alone measure of food insecurity but
instead as one of a suite of tools to measure
complementary aspects of food insecurity.
• Other components of a household food
insecurity assessment toolkit might include
anthropometric data on women and children;
measures of household income, expenditure,
and food production and consumption; and
information on coping strategies and household
and individual dietary diversity.

64. • The following Table shows the recommended format for the
HHS module.
No. Question Response Option Code
Q1 In the past [4 weeks/30 days], was there
ever no food to eat of any kind in your house
because of lack of resources to get food?
0 = No (Skip to Q2)
1 = Yes
|___|
Q1a How often did this happen in the past [4
weeks/30 days]?
1 = Rarely (1–2 times)
2 = Sometimes (3–10 times)
3 = Often (more than 10 times)
|___|
Q2 In the past [4 weeks/30 days], did you or any
household member go to sleep at night
hungry because there was not enough food?
0 = No (Skip to Q3)
1 = Yes
|___|
Q2a How often did this happen in the past [4
weeks/30 days]?
1 = Rarely (1–2 times)
2 = Sometimes (3–10 times)
3 = Often (more than 10 times)
|___|
Q3 the past [4 weeks/30 days], did you or any
household member) go a whole day and
night without eating anything at all because
there was not enough food?
0 = No (Skip to the next section
1 = Yes |___|
Q3a How often did this happen in the past [4
weeks/30 days]?
1 = Rarely (1–2 times)
2 = Sometimes (3–10 times)
3 = Often (more than 10 times)
|___|

65. Recoding of the HHS data collected Recoding of the
HHS Data Collected
Step 1. The first step is to recode the responses to
each frequency-of-occurrence question from three
frequency categories (“rarely,” “sometimes,” “often”)
into two frequency categories (“rarely or
sometimes” and “often”).
• To avoid losing the original data collected, create a
new variable for each frequency of- occurrence
question.
• Do not overwrite the original data.
• Here, we refer to the new variables created for
each frequency-of occurrence question as New
Q1, New Q2, and New Q3.

66. • For each of the new variables created, a frequency
response of “rarely” (originally coded as “1”) is coded as
“1”; a frequency response of “sometimes” (originally
coded as “2”) is coded as “1”; and a frequency response
of “often” (originally coded as “3”) is coded as “2”.
Step 2. Next, add a code of “0” for households that replied
“No” to each corresponding occurrence question. Once this
step is completed, all households should have a value of 0,
1, or 2 for each of the three new variables created, New
Q1, New Q2, and New Q3.
Step 3. The values of New Q1, New Q2, and New Q3 are
then summed for each household to calculate the HHS
score.
• If the tabulation has been carried out correctly, each
household will have an HHS score between 0 and 6.
• These values are then used to generate the HHS
indicators.

67. Table 2: HHS Categorical Indicator
Household Hunger Score Household Hunger Categories
0-1 Little to no hunger in the household
2-3 Moderate hunger in the household
4-6 Severe hunger in the household