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	Food Insecurity Experience Scale	Reduced Coping Strategies Index
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Latent structure	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2018	2008
Originator	Carlo Cafiero, Sara Viviani & Mark Nord (FAO Voices of the Hungry)	Daniel Maxwell & Richard Caldwell (CARE / WFP)
Type	Experience-based latent-trait food insecurity scale estimated by Rasch modeling	Standardized weighted index of food-consumption coping behaviors
Seminal source	Cafiero, C., Viviani, S., & Nord, M. (2018). Food security measurement in a global context: The food insecurity experience scale. Measurement, 116, 146-152.	Maxwell, D., & Caldwell, R. (2008). The Coping Strategies Index: A Tool for Rapid Measurement of Household Food Security and the Impact of Food Aid Programs in Humanitarian Emergencies. Field Methods Manual, 2nd Edition. Atlanta & Nairobi: CARE / WFP / Feinstein International Center, Tufts University & TANGO International.
Aliases	FIES, FAO Food Insecurity Experience Scale, Voices of the Hungry Scale, Experience-based Food Insecurity Scale	rCSI, Reduced CSI, WFP Reduced Coping Strategies Index
Related	3	3
Summary	The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is an experience-based metric of food insecurity built on eight yes/no survey questions and calibrated with a Rasch (one-parameter logistic) item response model. Developed by FAO's Voices of the Hungry project and formalized by Cafiero, Viviani and Nord in 2018, the FIES treats food insecurity as a single latent trait that ranges from anxiety about access, through compromises in food quality and quantity, to going without eating for a whole day. Because the items are calibrated to a common metric and equated onto a global reference scale, the FIES allows comparable estimates of the prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity across countries and over time, and it is the official instrument used to monitor SDG indicator 2.1.2.	The Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI) is a standardized, cross-context food-security indicator distilled from the Coping Strategies Index methodology of Maxwell and Caldwell. Where the full Coping Strategies Index inventories many context-specific coping behaviors with locally derived weights, the reduced version fixes on five consumption-based strategies — eating less-preferred foods, borrowing food, limiting portion size, restricting adults' intake so children can eat, and reducing the number of meals — each with a universal severity weight. Multiplying the number of days in the past week each strategy was used by its weight and summing gives a score from zero to 56. Because the strategies and weights are fixed, the rCSI is comparable across populations and countries, making it a widely used quick gauge of food-access stress.