The effectiveness of a short form of the household food security scale

Objectives. On the basis of an 18-item Household Food Security Scale, a sho rt form was developed to assess financially based food insecurity and hunge r in surveys of households with and without children. Methods. To maximize the probability that households would be correctly cla ssified with respect to food insecurity and hunger, 6 items from the full s cale were selected on the basis of April 1995 Current Population Survey dat a. Results. The short form classified 97.7% of households correctly and undere stimated the prevalence of overall food insecurity and of hunger by 0.3 per centage 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 appl ications.