SECTION TWO

Household Hunger Scale

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

HHS is an indicator to measure household hunger. HHS is collected by asking three questions on potentially experienced food deprivation at household level over the past 4 weeks/30 days.

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

Conduct interviews with a representative sample of households (one respondent per household) assessing if households have experienced a lack of food in the past 4 weeks/30 days. Module includes three questions and if the household has experienced the situation described in the question, a follow-up question on frequency of occurrence is also posed (rarely 1-2 times, sometimes 3-10 times, and often >10 times in past 4 weeks/30 days).

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

  • 1. Responses to each frequency-of-occurrence question from the three categories (rarely, sometimes and often) are recoded into two categories (rarely or sometimes and often).
  • 2. A value is given to each response category: no = 0, rarely or sometimes = 1, and often = 2.
  • 3. The values for all questions should be summed up to calculate the HHS score for each household. The resulting score can be anything between 0 (all the questions were answered ‘no’) and 6 (all the questions were answered ‘yes’ with high frequency of occurrence).
  • 4. For IPC purposes households should be divided into five categories based on their scores: 0 (no), 1 (slight), 2-3 (moderate), 4 (severe) and 5-6 (severe) that correspond to IPC Phases 1-5 respectively.

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

  • • HHS is appropriate for assessing severe food insecurity situations where households experience food deprivation.
  • • HHS is less relevant for areas and situations where food deprivation is not widespread.
  • • HHS does not include any aspects of quality of food consumption but focuses exclusively on food quantity.
  • • HHS results are likely to change due to impacts of e.g. seasonal changes and shocks

When to use it/when not to use it:

Appropriate for use in severe food security situations, but likely to be less informative in absence of food security crises.

Core: Y/N

Yes

IPC Categories:

Food Consumption Outcome

M&E: IMPACT, OUTCOME, OUTPUT, PROCESS

Impact/Outcome

Recall?

4 weeks/30 days

Link to guidance

Indikit