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American Journal of Public Health logoLink to American Journal of Public Health
. 1999 Aug;89(8):1231–1234. doi: 10.2105/ajph.89.8.1231

The effectiveness of a short form of the Household Food Security Scale.

S J Blumberg 1, K Bialostosky 1, W L Hamilton 1, R R Briefel 1
PMCID: PMC1508674  PMID: 10432912

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: On the basis of an 18-item Household Food Security Scale, a short form was developed to assess financially based food insecurity and hunger in surveys of households with and without children. METHODS: To maximize the probability that households would be correctly classified with respect to food insecurity and hunger, 6 items from the full scale were selected on the basis of April 1995 Current Population Survey data. RESULTS: The short form classified 97.7% of households correctly and underestimated the prevalence of overall food insecurity and of hunger by 0.3 percentage points. CONCLUSIONS: The short form of the Household Food Security Scale is a brief but potentially useful tool for national surveys and some state/local applications.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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