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The Food insecurity experience scale

development of a global standard for monitoring hunger worldwide

Year of publication 2013

Pages 51 p.

Author Ballard, Terri J. ;Kepple, Anne W.;Cafiero, Carlo;Statistics Division

Product type Project

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) FAO has been a partner in the development, validation and use of food (in)security scales since 2006 and has had an important role in furthering the research on the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (Escala Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Seguridad Alimentaria - ELCSA) through financial support for regional conferences on food security measurement and capacity-building in developing countries regarding validation and use of these tools (Melgar-Quinonez, 2010; FAO, 2012a). Because no single instrument measures food (in)security in all its dimensions, there has been substantial research devoted to developing, refining and validating different approaches for measuring the state of food insecurity. The development of measures of whether people are experiencing food insecurity because of limited access to food, and if so at what level of severity, constitutes an important addition to the suite of commonly used food security measures. Building on the experience of the Latin Ame rican scale, the FAO Voices of the Hungry project (VOH) has developed an experience-based food insecurity scale module called the Food Insecurity Experience scale (FIES), which is based on a short form of the ELCSA. The FIES will be used as a common metric for measuring food insecurity at several levels of severity, across different geographic areas and cultures.

Language English

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  • Thumbnail Image
    Document
    Evaluation of the Project “Voices of the Hungry”
    Project evaluation - Main report
    2018
    Also available in:
    Assessing the levels of hunger and food insecurity is essential for alerting decision makers, ensuring accountability, and developing and monitoring policies aimed at addressing hunger. The “Voices of the Hungry” Project is an effort to develop a global Food and Nutrition Security indicator based on people’s own perceptions of hunger. Building on prior experiences of partners, FAO developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), an experience-based measurement tool consisting of a set of questions about people’s access to adequate food. The project has achieved remarkable results. It contracted the Gallup World Poll to apply the FIES survey module to at least 140 countries from 2014 to 2016, to test the robustness of the FIES in different cultures, languages and livelihood conditions. It also provided support to around 60 countries to integrate the FIES in their national surveys. FIES was endorsed as an official indicator to monitor SDG2 - End Hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Document
    Evaluation of the Project “Voices of the Hungry” - Annex
    Project evaluation - Annexes
    2018
    Also available in:
    Assessing the levels of hunger and food insecurity is essential for alerting decision makers, ensuring accountability, and developing and monitoring policies aimed at addressing hunger. The “Voices of the Hungry” Project is an effort to develop a global Food and Nutrition Security indicator based on people’s own perceptions of hunger. Building on prior experiences of partners, FAO developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), an experience-based measurement tool consisting of a set of questions about people’s access to adequate food. The project has achieved remarkable results. It contracted the Gallup World Poll to apply the FIES survey module to at least 140 countries from 2014 to 2016, to test the robustness of the FIES in different cultures, languages and livelihood conditions. It also provided support to around 60 countries to integrate the FIES in their national surveys. FIES was endorsed as an official indicator to monitor SDG2 - End Hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
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    Book (series)
    The relationship between food insecurity and dietary outcomes
    An analysis conducted with nationally representative data from Kenya, Mexico, Samoa and the Sudan
    2021
    Also available in:
    Little research has been conducted on the association of food insecurity, particularly at the moderate level, and dietary consumption in low- and middle-income countries. This study expands on previous works by considering cross-country comparable measures of food insecurity that are calibrated against the global Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). The FAO Statistics Division has been publishing estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity, based on the FIES, since 2017. The FIES is the first standardized measure, of people's direct experiences of food insecurity, appropriate for application on a global scale. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on the FIES is one of the official SDG indicators (2.1.2). The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between the severity of food insecurity, as measured with the FIES (or an analogous experience-based food insecurity scale calibrated to the global reference scale), and dietary intake using microdata from four middle-income countries from different world regions: Kenya, Mexico, Samoa, and Sudan.
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