Household Food Security in the United States, 1998 and 1999: Technical Report

by Barbara Cohen, Mark Nord, Robert Lerner, James Parry, and Kenneth Yang

This report complements prior reports on measuring household food security in the United States. It explores key technical issues related to Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data, focusing especially on the August 1998 and April 1999 surveys. These technical issues include the estimation of standard errors using either balanced repeated replication techniques or generalized variance functions (GVFs) developed by the Census Bureau; the effect of alternating survey periods between spring and fall for the 1995-99 CPS Supplement; and the effect of using different Item Response Theory (IRT) modeling approaches and software to create the food security scale. The report also presents 1998 and 1999 item calibrations and household scores developed through the use of IRT modeling.

Keywords: Hunger, food security, food insecurity, food security measurement, variance estimation, Rasch measurement

In this publication...

• Entire Report
• Abstract, Contents, Acknowledgments, Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Unique Data Issues in the 1998 and 1999 Food Security Supplements
• Estimating Standard Errors
• Impact of Survey Season on Food Security Prevalence
• Calculating Item Calibrations and Household Scale Scores
• References