HCP partners Vonai Charamba, Lawrence N. Kazembe and Ndeyapo Nickanor from University of Namibia publish a paper in the journal Food Security on the application of item response theory modelling to measure an aggregate food security access score. The study proposes a composite food insecurity indicator by aggregating items from Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Months of Inadequate Household Food Provision (MIHFP) for Windhoek households’ data into a single measure using the Rasch Testlet Response Model. The composite measure was internally validated against the HDDS, HFIAS and MIHFP and externally validated against household income and the Lived Poverty Index (LPI) using Spearman’s Rank Correlation and Cohen’s Kappa. The validation results suggest that the metric could be a promising measure of aggregate food insecurity worth further investigation and discussion.
