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	U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module	Reduced Coping Strategies Index
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Latent structure	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2000	2008
Originator	Gary Bickel, Mark Nord, William Hamilton et al. (USDA Federal Interagency Food Security Measurement Project)	Daniel Maxwell & Richard Caldwell (CARE / WFP)
Type	Experience-based household food security scale calibrated by Rasch measurement	Standardized weighted index of food-consumption coping behaviors
Seminal source	Bickel, G., Nord, M., Price, C., Hamilton, W., & Cook, J. (2000). Guide to Measuring Household Food Security, Revised 2000. Alexandria, VA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service.	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	HFSSM, USDA Household Food Security Survey Module, Core Food Security Module, US Food Security Scale	rCSI, Reduced CSI, WFP Reduced Coping Strategies Index
Related	3	3
Summary	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.	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.