U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module

The U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) is the standard instrument for measuring food insecurity in the United States, developed in the 1990s by the USDA-led Federal Interagency Food Security Measurement Project and documented in Bickel, Nord, Price, Hamilton and Cook's 2000 Guide to Measuring Household Food Security. It is an experience-based scale: a set of ten adult-referenced and eight child-referenced questions, with frequency follow-ups, that ask whether households cut back on food, skipped meals, or went hungry because they lacked money for food. Responses are calibrated with a Rasch measurement model onto a single severity continuum, and households are classified into high, marginal, low, and very low food security, the categories behind the annual national food-security statistics.