The effectiveness of a short form of the Household Food Security Scale.
OBJECTIVE
On the basis of an 18-item Household Food Security Scale, a short form was developed to assess financially based food insecurity and hunger in surveys of households with and without children.


METHODS
To maximize the probability that households would be correctly classified with respect to food insecurity and hunger, 6 items from the full scale were selected on the basis of April 1995 Current Population Survey data.


RESULTS
The short form classified 97.7% of households correctly and underestimated the prevalence of overall food insecurity and of hunger by 0.3 percentage points.


CONCLUSIONS
The short form of the Household Food Security Scale is a brief but potentially useful tool for national surveys and some state/local applications.
Blumberg
S J
SJ
National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hyattsville, Md. 20782, USA. swb5@cdc.gov
Bialostosky
K
K
Hamilton
W L
WL
Briefel
R R
RR
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005523:Food Supply; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D006815:Hunger; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014481:United States