Assessing the internal validity of a household survey-based food security measure adapted for use in Iran

Nutrition Journal

Table 3 Measured values of severity of adult food insecurity by raw score on Isfahan adult food security scale, and prevalence of adult food insecurity among households in the Isfahan food security pilot survey

Raw score	Household score*	Measurement error	Percent of households	Cumulative percent of households
0	Unknown**	NA	34.95	34.95
1	2.38	1.20	9.84	44.78
2	3.62	1.08	9.39	54.17
3	4.84	1.12	19.92	74.09
4	6.07	1.09	8.49	82.58
5	7.20	1.05	5.79	88.37
6	8.31	1.06	4.49	92.86
7	9.57	1.23	4.04	96.90
8	10.51**	1.57	3.10	100.00

* Maximum likelihood estimates based on item calibrations in table 1.
** The severity of food insecurity in households that affirmed no items (raw score = 0) cannot be estimated based only on item calibrations. These households are more food secure than those that affirmed one item, but the size of the interval is unknown. Technically, the severity of food insecurity in households that affirmed all 8 items is also unknown, but given that this comprises only a small proportion of households, it is conventional to estimate their severity at a raw score of 7.5, as was done in this case.

ISSN: 1475-2891