Household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) for measurement of food access: indicator guide

Measuring food insecurity is a complex, multidimensional concept, and has been an ongoing challenge for researchers and practitioners. Household-level measures of food access have, until recently, been technically difficult, data-intensive, and costly to collect.

This document is a guide for implementing the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). This method is based on the idea that the experience of food insecurity causes predictable reactions and responses that can be captured and quantified through a survey and summarised in a scale. It 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. The information generated by the HFIAS can be used to assess the prevalence of household food insecurity and to detect changes in the food insecurity situation of a population over time. The questions can be added to a standard baseline and final evaluation survey.

The intent of this guide is to provide a means for food security programmes to easily measure the impact of their programmes on the access component of household food insecurity. Measuring the utilisation component of food insecurity is better accomplished using other measurement tools, such as anthropometric indicators. Likewise, HFIAS food quality questions do not refer directly to nutritional quality.

The guide is presented as follows:

• adapting the questionnaire and probing: this lists the generic questions and describes a two-step process to adapt the model questionnaire
• interviewer instructions: provides specific instructions to the interviewers
• model questionnaire
• indicator tabulation plan: describes how the questions can be tabulated to make indicators and provides recommendations for their use and interpretation.