Measuring Food Security in the Dominican Republic: Adaptation of the U.S. Food Security Survey Module

Overview

The U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module was translated into Spanish and adapted for use in the Dominican Republic. Qualitative assessment in a focus group was conducted to confirm the relevance of the concepts and to refine the questions. A pilot survey of 110 households in a rural, economically vulnerable community was conducted, and the data were analyzed to assess the validity of the questions as a multiple-item measure of household food insecurity. Both internal and construct validity appear to be acceptable, although further assessment of two items is recommended. The Dominican survey module complements work in several other countries in Central and South American and the Caribbean to develop a common set of food security questions for use in diverse cultural and linguistic settings.

This study was conducted by Clark Atlanta University and the Instituto Dominicano De Investigaciones Agropecuarias Y Forestales under a cooperative research contract with USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) Food and Nutrition Assistance Research Program (FANRP) (ERSproject representative: Mark Nord). The views expressed are those of the authors and notnecessarily those of ERS or USDA.