Preliminary validation and piloting of a comprehensive measure of household food security in Australia

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the psychometric properties, validity and reliability of a newly developed measure of food insecurity, the Household Food and Nutrition Security Survey (HFNSS), among an Australian population.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Metropolitan areas of Melbourne, Australia, identified as very high, high or medium vulnerability in the 2008 Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage, Petrol and Inflation Risks and Expenditure index.

Subjects: A convenience sample of 134 adults (117 females and fifteen males, aged over 18 years).

Results: Rasch modelling and factor analysis identified four items for exclusion. The remaining items yielded excellent reliability among the current sample and assessed three underlying components: the adult experience of food insecurity (component one), initial/periodic changes to children's food intakes (component two) and progressive/persistent decreases in children's food intakes (component three). Compared with the widely used US Department of Agriculture Food Security Survey Module, the HFNSS identified a significantly higher proportion of food insecurity; this is likely due to the HFNSS's identification of food insecurity due to reasons other than (and including) limited financial access.

Conclusions: The HFNSS may be a valid and reliable tool for the assessment of food insecurity among the Australian population and provides a means of assessing multiple barriers to food security beyond poor financial access (which has been identified as a limitation of other existing tools). Future research should explore the validity and reliability of the tool among a more representative sample, as well as specifically among vulnerable population subgroups.

Keywords: Food insecurity; Food security; Measurement; Scales; Validation.

Fig. 1

Statistical analysis process