Food Insecurity Experience Scale

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.