Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) produces annual estimates of the prevalence and severity of food insecurity. Food insecure households do not have consistent, dependable access to enough food for an active healthy life (Andersen, 1990). Food insecurity is a significant social and economic problem in the United States with 15.8 million households (12.7 percent) in the United States experiencing food insecurity at some point during the 2015 year (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2016). The major instrument used to measure food insecurity in the United States is the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) that is included in the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS). The HFSSM is a series of 18 survey items about the conditions and behaviors characterizing households having difficulty meeting their basic food needs with 10 adult and 8 child focused items.

The HFSSM is currently based on the unidimensional Rasch measurement model (Rasch, 1960/1980). The Rasch model assumes that responses to the HFSSM items are indicators of a single underlying latent index of food insecurity. While the assumption of unidimensionality may be reasonable for households without children, recent research suggests two latent dimensions may exist for households with children (Wilde, 2004; National Research Council, 2006; Nord, 2012; Nord and Coleman-Jensen, 2015). Failure to account for multidimensionality of food insecurity among households with children may distort comparisons of food security between households with and without children. According to the most recent annual food security report, nearly one-third of the difference in food insecurity between households with and without children is accounted for by the difference in measures applied to the two types of households (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2016).

The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensionality of the HFSSM using a factor-analytic perspective based on the bi-factor model (Reise, 2012). The bi-factor model provides an approach for modeling three dimensions of food insecurity (household, adult and child factors). The bi-factor model is being widely used in a variety of contexts, but it has not been used to examine the dimensionality of food insecurity scales.

 

Data from the 2013-15 CPS-FSS administrations of the HFSSM are analyzed in this study. A bi-factor model of food insecurity will be estimated. The model parameters will be used to evaluate the psychometric quality of the HFSSM, and to assess the usefulness of a bi-factor model in measuring and conceptualizing food insecurity in U.S. for households with children.