title: Development of a tool to assess past food insecurity of immigrant latino mothers.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose is to describe the development and validation of a tool to measure the degree of past food insecurity in an immigrant US population.
  
  
  METHODS
  Focus group discussions and a structured interview. As a first step, focus group discussions were conducted among immigrant Latino mothers. Based on these discussions, an 8-item tool was developed and pilot-tested in a convenience sample of mothers.
  
  
  METHODS
  California.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-two low-income Latino mothers with children, ages 4 to 5 years, in the focus groups and 85 low-income Latino and white mothers of young children in the structured interviews.
  
  
  METHODS
  Constant comparative analysis, Cronbach alpha, Spearman correlations, Chi-square, and Kruskal-Wallis test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Internal consistency of the remaining 7 items was good (Cronbach alpha = 0.84). Evidence of convergent validity included significant correlations between past food insecurity and maternal education (r = -0.45, p < .0001), crowding in the mother's childhood household (r = +0.30, p < .006), and past food insufficiency (r = +0.74, p < .0001). Foreign-born Latino mothers reported significantly greater levels of past food insecurity than US-born mothers, demonstrating discriminant validity (p < .01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This tool may be useful to determine how past deprivation influences current food choices and other nutrition-related behaviors in low-income Latino immigrants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
authors.forename: Edith M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Kuyper
authors.forename: Gloria
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Espinosa-Hall
authors.forename: Catherine L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Lamp
authors.forename: Anna C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Diane L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Metz
authors.forename: Dorothy
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Marilyn S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Townsend
authors.forename: Lucia L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Kaiser
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002140:California; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004034:Diet Surveys; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D005523:Food Supply / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D006815:Hunger; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007843:Latin America / Q000208:ethnology; D008297:Male; D011203:Poverty