Technical Note 6
Measuring and Tracking the Access Dimension of Food Security: Available Indicators and
Recommendations for Future Investments
Marie T. Ruel,a Terri J. Ballard,b and Megan Deitchlerc
a
International Food Policy Research Institute
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
c
Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance / FHI360
b
With recent and predicted future changes in the global environment, including weather-related
shocks that threaten food production, yields, and prices, food security has become a top priority for
governments and the development community. While global-level discussions have largely focused
on feeding the growing population, which is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, an equally
daunting challenge is to ensure that every household and individual on the planet has access to the
right quantity and quality of food and to a balanced, healthy, safe, and affordable diet.
Access to food is one of four dimensions of food security, along with availability, utilization and
stability of supply, and access (FAO 1996). Food access includes several components, namely quantity
(food and energy sufficiency), quality (adequate levels of essential nutrients), safety (free of
contaminants, parasites, and bacteria that pose health risks), and cultural acceptability and
preferences (fits in people’s traditional or preferred diet). Because of its complex, multidimensional,
and multicomponent nature, food security is difficult to measure. When it comes to food access,
several indicators are commonly used, but some confusion arises as to what constructs these
indicators reflect and for which purposes they should be used.
A recent review identified nine commonly used indicators of access to food (Leroy et al., under review)
(Table 1) and grouped them into three categories: (1) experience-based indicators, (2) coping
strategies, and (3) dietary diversity (DD).1 Additionally, they were categorized by the level at which
they are measured (household or individual) and by whether they captured the quantity or quality of
food. No indicators were found that captured the safety or cultural acceptability of food access.
Table 1 Indicators of food access, by level of measurement and component of food security
Level
of Quantity (calories)
Quality (micronutrients)
measurement
1. Experience-based indicators
Household
Household Food Security Survey Module
Validated for quantity and quality; can be used in the United States across contexts, but not for crosscountry comparisons
Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale
Validated for quantity and quantity; can be used for cross-context/cross-country comparisons in Latin
American countries
Household Food Insecurity Access Scale
Validated by testing association with other measures understood to be determinants or consequences
of food security (not directly for quantity or quality); not appropriate for cross-context/cross-country
comparisons
www.globalnutritionreport.org
1
Household Hunger Scale
Validated and shown to capture universal experiences of lack of food (quantity/energy); can be used
for cross-country/cross-context comparisons
2. Coping strategies
Household
Coping Strategy Index
Poor performance in predicting food access
(quantity); cannot be used for crosscountry/cross-context
comparisons
(meant to be context-specific)
3. Dietary diversity scores (DDS)
Household
Household DDS
Validated for quantity but not quality of food access; not tested for cross-country/cross-context
comparisons
Food Consumption Score
As above
Individual
Individual DDS
Child DDS
Validated for quality; not tested for cross-country/crosscontext comparisons
Women’s DDS
As above
Source: Leroy et al. (under review).
Highlights and recommendations from the review are as follows:
Highlights
• Experience-based indicators have been extensively validated and are useful for capturing
both quantity and quality of food access; the household hunger scale (HHS) captures universal
experiences of severe lack of food (quantity/energy) and is the only indicator that is valid for
cross-country comparisons.
• Household DD scores (HDDS) and the food consumption score (FCS) are used as indicators of
access to both food quantity and food quality and have been shown to be associated with
food quantity (energy). These indicators, however, have not been validated for their ability to
reflect access to diet quality.
• Individual DD scores (IDDS) were originally designed and have been shown to be valid as
indicators of diet quality in women and children (defined as micronutrient adequacy or
density of the diet, respectively); they are considered useful proxies of access to diet quality.2
• Coping strategy indicators (CSI) are not appropriate for estimating food access (they have
been shown to perform poorly at predicting poor or adequate access to food).
Recommendations
• Use experience-based indicators, HDDS, or FCS, to assess household access to sufficient food
quantity (energy).
• Use experience-based indicators (with the exception of HHS) to assess household access to
diet quality.
• Use individual DD scores for women or children as a proxy to assess individual access to diet
quality.
2
www.globalnutritionreport.org
•
•
Validate the HDDS and FCS for their performance at predicting household access to diet
quality and to redesign them for use for this purpose, if appropriate.
Validate CSI for its potential usefulness for early warning and for targeting interventions to
prevent deterioration in food access.
It is well recognized that no single indicator can capture the complex reality of food security. It is likely
that a suite of indicators that accurately reflects specific dimensions and components of food security
would be useful, but these indicators have to be simple, yet valid, if they are to be incorporated into large
data collection exercises. To assess food access, measurements have to be done at either the household
or individual level. Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with its
partners launched a new initiative (see Technical Note 7 Voices of the Hungry: Where in the World is Food
Security More Severe?) that uses a validated experienced-based indicator (Food Insecurity Experience
Scale (FIES)) that will be measured in more than 150 countries annually and will be integrated in the suite
of indicators published by FAO to document the state of food security in the world. This information will
be invaluable and will provide the first nationally representative data on the food access dimension of
food security and on both quantity and quality of food access.
We identify three broad priority areas for investments in improving food security access information in
the future: (1) investments in setting up (and maintaining) a worldwide data collection system that allows
incorporating standard measures of key food security indicators, including simple food access indicators
measured at household and individual levels; (2) investments in building from existing work to carry out
careful validation of new or existing food security access indicators for different purposes (for example,
for assessment, monitoring, impact evaluation, targeting) and to measure other components of food
access such as safety and stability; and (3) investments in coordination among actors and harmonization
of indicators at all levels and for all uses, including in research, practice, and policy.
References
FAO. 1996. Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action. Rome.
Leroy JL, Ruel M, Frongillo EA, Harris J, and Ballard TJ. (Under review). Measuring the food access
dimension of food security: a critical review and mapping of indicators.
Notes
Experience-based indicators are used to assess the access component of household food security,
focusing on the experiences of adults and children, as reported by an adult respondent for the household.
These indicators typically use questions to collect information on a range of severity of food-insecurity
experiences covering the quantity and quality of food and feelings of uncertainty of losing access to food.
Coping strategy indicators are used to assess the frequency of occurrence of behaviors people engage in
when they cannot access enough food (referred to as coping strategies, which can have a varying degree
of severity in terms of consequences for health and nutrition). Coping strategy indicators focus on four
basic categories of behaviors: dietary changes, short-term measures to increase household food
availability, short-term measures to decrease the number of people in relation to available food, and
approaches to rationing or managing the shortfall. Dietary diversity (DD) indicators, which can be
measured at either the household or individual level, are constructed using a simple count of foods or
1
www.globalnutritionreport.org
3
food groups consumed over a reference period, usually 24 hours. The household DD score was developed
specifically to measure food security, whereas the individual DD scores (for women and children) have
been developed and validated to reflect the micronutrient adequacy (in women) and density (in children)
of the diet. Dietary diversity is a universally recognized critical component of dietary quality.
Although the IDDSs were originally designed to measure intake of diverse food groups over a given period
of time (usually 24 hours), as opposed to access to diverse foods and diet quality, they were included in
the review of indicators of the access dimension of food security (Leroy et al. under review) because they
are considered potentially useful proxies of access to diet quality, especially in very poor environments.
At this time, no other indicators have been validated as rigorously as the individual DD indicators for their
association with micronutrient adequacy or density of the diet, a key aspect of diet quality.
2
www.globalnutritionreport.org
4