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{{ assessmentDefinition.instrument.name }} is the official 10-item USDA adult module for reported household food access during the last 12 months. It does not assess child food security, diet quality, or benefit eligibility.

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Food security describes dependable economic and social access to enough food. It is not the same as diet quality, nutrient intake, cooking skill, or personal preference. A household can report food-access problems even when the foods available differ from what a nutrition assessment would recommend.

The U.S. Adult Food Security Survey Module asks about conditions experienced by adults during the previous 12 months because there was not enough money for food. Its ten items cover worry that food would run out, food not lasting, difficulty affording balanced meals, reduced meal size or frequency, hunger, weight loss, and not eating for a whole day.

This adult module can be used for households with or without children, but its result concerns adult food security only. It deliberately leaves out child-referenced questions. That reduces respondent burden and supports comparisons across different household compositions, but it cannot establish whether children in the household experienced food insecurity.

  • The recall period is the same previous 12 months for every reached item.
  • Only USDA-defined affirmative responses add to the raw score.
  • Official screeners skip later questions when earlier answers show no reported hardship.
  • The resulting status is a survey classification, not a diagnosis or benefit-eligibility decision.

Food-access questions can feel personal. Answer for one household and one recall period, and use a private setting. A score may support research, service conversations, or self-understanding, but it does not identify the cause of hardship or measure fraud, nutrition adequacy, or immediate emergency need.

How to Use This Tool:

Answer each reached question for the same household and the same previous-12-month period. Later stages appear only when the official screener rules require them.

  1. Select Start assessment and answer the first three household and adult food-access statements.
  2. Continue through Adult Stages 2 and 3 when they appear. Frequency follow-ups are shown only after their parent question is answered affirmatively.
  3. Finish after every reached item is answered. Items bypassed by a screener are recorded as official skips and contribute zero, not missing data.
  4. Read the Adult food-security raw score, status label, and two-category Food secure or Food insecure grouping together.

Interpreting Results:

The raw score counts affirmative adult food-hardship conditions from 0 to 10. Scores of 0 to 2 fall in the USDA Food secure grouping; scores of 3 to 10 fall in the Food insecure grouping. The four detailed labels preserve more information than that two-category summary.

The status describes reported adult experiences over the recall period. It does not assess children, diagnose a health condition, grade diet quality, or decide benefit eligibility. If food access is difficult now, the score should not delay contact with a trusted local food-assistance service.

Technical Details:

Each item is coded 1 only for the response categories USDA defines as affirmative. Yes, often, sometimes, almost every month, and some months but not every month are affirmative where those choices apply. No, never, only one or two months, don't know, and official skips contribute 0.

Formula Core

The adult raw score is the sum of ten binary item contributions.

R=∑i=110ai,ai∈{0,1}

Here, ai is 1 for an affirmative response and 0 otherwise. No weighting or rounding is applied.

Rule Core

Raw scoreAdult food-security statusTwo-category group
0High food security among adultsFood secure
1 to 2Marginal food security among adultsFood secure
3 to 5Low food security among adultsFood insecure
6 to 10Very low food security among adultsFood insecure

The first screener ends the module after HH2 through HH4 when none is affirmative. If Stage 2 is reached but none of AD1 through AD4 is affirmative, Stage 3 is skipped. Screened-out items are coded nonaffirmative so the raw score remains complete under the official design.

For example, two affirmative responses and eight nonaffirmative or officially skipped responses produce a raw score of 2, which is Marginal food security among adults. One additional affirmative response moves the result to 3 and the Low food security among adults band.

Limitations and Privacy:

Recall, question wording, translation, interview conditions, and cultural context can affect responses. Pilot studies validating the module in a new context may need full administration rather than screening. Answers remain in browser memory, but a copied share link contains all ten response codes and official skips. The link is encoded, not encrypted or access-controlled.

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