SECTION TWO

Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS)

Definition/RATION/ALE – what does it measure? (max 2 lines)

This indicator measures the severity of household food insecurity. It focuses on the “access” aspect of food insecurity (i.e. not on food utilization). It is based on respondents’ perceptions of their households’ food vulnerability and on their behavioural responses to food insecurity.

Methodology for collection – How to collect information for indicator (max 4 lines).

  • • Conducting individual interviews with a representative sample of your target households, asking them: nine “occurrence” questions representing a generally increasing level of severity of food insecurity.
  • • Nine “frequency-of-occurrence” questions that are asked as a follow-up to each occurrence question to determine how often the situation occurred.

Methodology for analysis – How to analyse (Max 4 lines)
Visual demonstrations for thresholds
How to interpret: Urban v. rural, gender

  • • The HFIAS score is a continuous measure of the degree of food insecurity (access) in the household in the past four weeks (30 days).
  • • Four types of indicators can be calculated to help understand the characteristics of and changes in household food insecurity (access) in the surveyed population.
  • • A HFIAS score variable is calculated for each household by summing the codes for each frequency-of-occurrence question.
  • • The lower the score (0-27), the less food insecurity (access) a household experienced.
  • • Determine the indicator’s value by summing up the scores of all households and then dividing the result by the number of interviewed households.

Notes on indicator –
What does the indicator not tell us.
How long is it reliable for?

  • • There are two terms used throughout the questionnaire that are highly context specific: “household” and “lack of resources.”
  • • By “household” we mean those of you that sleep under the same roof and take meals together at least four days a week
  • • It is not recommended that an average increase from 12 to 24 be reported as a “doubling of food insecurity”, but rather as a “doubling of the food insecurity score.”

When to use it/when not to use it:

• HFIAS is expected to be used both in contexts with rapidly changing situations, where the primary interest is in detecting acute/ transitory insecurity, as well as in relatively stable situations, where the problem is one of chronic food insecurity.

Core: Y/N

No

IPC Categories:

Food Consumption Outcome

M&E: IMPACT, OUTCOME, OUTPUT, PROCESS

Outcome

Recall?

4 weeks/30 days

Link to guidance

Indikit