Compare methods

	Reduced Coping Strategies Index	Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2008	2010
Originator	Daniel Maxwell & Richard Caldwell (CARE / WFP)	Paula Bilinsky & Anne Swindale (FANTA)
Type	Standardized weighted index of food-consumption coping behaviors	Recall-based count of months of adequate household food access over a 12-month period
Seminal source	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.	Bilinsky, P., & Swindale, A. (2010). Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning (MAHFP) for Measurement of Household Food Access: Indicator Guide (Version 4). Washington, DC: Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance II Project (FANTA-2), FHI 360.
Aliases	rCSI, Reduced CSI, WFP Reduced Coping Strategies Index	MAHFP, FANTA Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning, Adequate Food Provisioning Months Indicator
Related	3	3
Summary	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.	Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning (MAHFP) is a FANTA food-access indicator, documented by Bilinsky and Swindale in 2010, that captures the temporal dimension of household food security. Rather than asking about the past week or month, it asks the household to recall, across all twelve months of the previous year, in which months it did not have enough food to meet its needs. The number of adequately provisioned months — twelve minus the count of inadequate months — is the MAHFP, ranging from zero to twelve. Because it spans a full year and is anchored to the local seasonal calendar, MAHFP reveals chronic and seasonal food shortfalls that point-in-time measures miss, and its mean and monthly profile are easy to compute and compare.