Coping Strategies Index
The Coping Strategies Index (CSI) is a behaviour-based indicator of household food insecurity that counts and weights the consumption-related coping strategies households adopt when they cannot access enough food. Developed by Daniel Maxwell in the 1990s and standardised in the CARE/WFP field manual, it asks how frequently a household resorted to behaviours such as eating less-preferred foods, borrowing food, reducing portion sizes, restricting adult consumption, or skipping meals, and combines frequency with severity into a single score that is quick to collect and well suited to monitoring and early warning.
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Sources
- Maxwell, D. G. (1996). Measuring food insecurity: the frequency and severity of 'coping strategies'. Food Policy, 21(3), 291–303. DOI: 10.1016/0306-9192(96)00005-X ↗
- Maxwell, D., & Caldwell, R. (2008). The Coping Strategies Index: Field Methods Manual (2nd ed.). Atlanta / Rome: CARE and World Food Programme. link ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Coping Strategies Index (CSI). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/development-studies/coping-strategies-index
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