World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 82

Constructing a Database for Food Security Assessments in Southeast Asia

summed up into an aggregate score. The
food groups with high energy content,
good quality protein, and micronutrients
receive the highest weight of 4, and sugar
and oil the lowest of 0.5. Households
with a FCS <35 are then classified as food
insecure. A score of 21 was indicated to
be the minimum.

The household diet diversity score
(HDDS) is also derived from consumption
recall surveys, but preferably for a 24 hours
recall period (Hoddinott 1999; Jones et al.
2013; Jones, Shrinivas, and Bezner-Kerr
2014). It is an indicator for dietary q uality
and captures how many food items or
food groups a household has consumed.
It distinguishes between 11 food groups
and simply sums the number of different
food groups. Accordingly, the HDDS
ranges between 0 and 11 for households
with the most diverse diet. Thresholds
dividing households into high- or lowdiversity groups are not provided.

Finally, the household food
insecurity access scale (HFIAS) (Swindale
and Bilinski 2006) is a survey-basedoutcome indicator where respondents
answer a set of nine questions that give a
subjective measure of a household’s food
insecurity status. These include domains
like anxiety/uncertainty about food
access, quality of food, and quantity of
food. The set of questions identified for
each domain represents the experience
of food insecurity (access) under that
domain. The questions are meant to
be universally understandable and in
principle can be adapted to different
cultural contexts provided consistency of
the concept is maintained.
Anthropometric
measures
are usually applied as a proxy of food
utilization and reflect chronic or acute

mal- or undernourishment (Jones et
al. 2013). The most frequently used
measures are weight for age (WFA) and
height for age (HFA), both referred to
children with age <5 years. If the weight
of a child is too low for the height, the
term “wasting” is used. Stunted children
are too short for their age, indicating maland undernutrition (de Haen et al. 2011).
Child underweight combines the two
indicators and is defined as a low weight
for age ratio.

To sum up, the choice of
indicators for assessing the food security
status is crucial. Different indicators often
come to very different assessments for the
same food security situation (de Haen et
al. 2011). Development organizations
such as FAO often suggest that food
security assessments should include
several indicators in order to capture the
multidimensional facets of food security.
There is currently no consensus which
indicators should be given priority to and
to what extent they are complements or
substitutes (see, e.g., Maxwell, Vaitla, and
Coates 2014; Headey and Ecker 2013;
Coates 2013; Jones et al. 2013; Carletto,
Zezza, and Banerjee 2013).

Headey and Ecker (2013) stressed
that the accurate measurement of food
security at micro or macro levels is of
vital importance as policymakers and
NGOs respond to it. Carletto, Zezza, and
Banerjee (2013) noted that a consensus on
appropriate indicators would benefit the
measurement of global food security and
the coordination between organizations.
Consequently, more research is needed.
Such research should not be limited to
just measuring the extent of the food
security problem but should focus on the
causes of food insecurity.
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