Food security may be defined as a state in which "all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet their dietary needs for a productive and healthy life" (United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 1992). This is a complex, multidimensional concept; thus "measuring food insecurity has been an ongoing challenge to researchers and practitioners alike. Until very recently, most household-level measures of food access, such as income and caloric adequacy, have been technically difficult, data-intensive, and costly to collect."

To respond to this need, the USAID's Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project offers this 37-page document as a guide for implementing the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), which is an adaptation of the approach used to generate the annual number of food-insecure and hungry people in the United States. This method is based on the idea that the lived experience of food insecurity causes predictable reactions and responses that can be captured and quantified through a survey and summarised in a scale. It emerges from FANTA's series of research initiatives to explore and test various methodologically rigorous indicators of the access component of household food insecurity (which includes availability, access, and utilisation). These indicators, it is hoped, can be used to guide, monitor, and evaluate programme interventions - as well as foster reporting on the extent to which these interventions have been effective.

The HFIAS is based on the 18-question U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module (US HFSSM), which asks respondents to describe behaviours and attitudes that relate to the "domains", of the food insecurity experience. These domains include: 1) anxiety and uncertainty about the household food supple, 2) insufficient quality (includes variety and preferences of the type of food), and 3) insufficient food intake and its physical consequences. For example, a question relating to perceptions of insufficient quantity asks whether any adults had to eat less than they thought they should. Among the uncertainty-related questions is one about whether the respondent worried that the household's food would run out. These questions are designed to be added to a standard baseline and final evaluation survey.

The authors note that recent field validation studies of US HFSSM have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of the approach in very different, developing country contexts. "The measures constructed were strongly correlated with common indicators of poverty and food consumption as well as with indicators currently used by Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs) to monitor their food security-related activities. They were also sensitive to changes in the households' situation over time, making them valid and useful for assessing program impact..."

Local participation is a core strategy in shaping what is ultimately a one-on-one information exchange between a member of the household and the field agent conducting the interview/research. As indicated here, the first step of the process involves gathering a few key informants - private voluntary organisation (PVO) staff members, government officials, academics, prominent community members, or other knowledgeable individuals - who are familiar with the conditions and experiences of household food insecurity in the areas where the survey will be conducted. "It should be explained to the key informants that they are being consulted to ensure that the food insecurity (access) questions are
understandable in their country or culture. They should also be given the option to participate or not, and should be informed that they can choose to leave or refuse to answer a question at any time. Where possible, the key informants should be consulted as a group, so that any discrepancies in their suggestions can be clarified at the same time." The person conducting the key informant interviews (the "Interviewer") is encouraged to follow the Key Informant Interview Guide presented in Appendix 1.

The second step in preparing the questionnaire is to ensure that the questions are understood by respondents as they are intended. This step, which enables further refinement of the questions and examples, involves one-on-one discussions with 8-10 individuals who are representative of the survey population. Following this process, the Interviewer is ready to ask questions (of the person in the household who is most involved with food preparation and meals), and to record answers. Detailed instructions are provided here.

A tabulation plan is then presented; the authors stress that the indicators presented in this plan "are useful for reporting food insecurity (access) prevalence, for making population level targeting decisions, and for examining the impact of program activities on overall food insecurity (access) or some dimension of it. The indicators are not intended, however, to be used to determine the causes of a problem or to guide a response - e.g., assessments of nutrition knowledge in order to design a behavior change intervention."

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