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This is the official USDA six-item short form for household food-security status. Answer for your household over the last 12 months.

Privacy: {{ assessmentMemoryDisclosure }} {{ assessmentDefinition.privacy.disclosure }} This short form is less precise than the 18- or 10-item USDA modules and does not measure children’s food security.
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Household food security describes reliable access to enough food for an active, healthy life. It is an economic-access measure, not a judgment about cooking choices, body weight, or the nutritional quality of one meal. A household can face food insecurity even when the signs are intermittent or hidden by coping strategies.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) six-item short form asks about conditions during the last 12 months: food not lasting, inability to afford balanced meals, adults cutting or skipping meals, eating less than needed, and being hungry without eating because money for food was insufficient. Responses are coded into an affirmative-condition count from 0 to 6.

The short form is useful when a survey cannot support the 18-item household module or the 10-item adult module. It reduces respondent burden and has a known relationship to the longer measures, but the tradeoff is important:

  • it is less precise and somewhat less reliable than the 18-item measure;
  • it does not measure children's food-security conditions;
  • it does not distinguish the most severe range of adult food insecurity; and
  • it describes household status rather than benefit eligibility, diagnosis, or individual blame.

A low score should be read within the 12-month recall period and the questions actually asked. It does not prove that every household member has adequate food now. A high score signals more reported food-access hardship, but it does not identify the cause or determine which assistance is available.

Because the questions concern financial hardship and hunger, participation should be voluntary and private. Survey administrators should have a clear plan for responding respectfully when answers reveal a current need for food support.

How to Use This Tool:

Answer for the household as a whole over the last 12 months. Keep the same household and recall period for all six items.

  1. Start the assessment and answer whether food failed to last and balanced meals were unaffordable. Use Don't know only when that is genuinely the best response.
  2. Answer whether adults cut or skipped meals because there was not enough money for food. The follow-up frequency item appears only after Yes.
  3. Continue to the eating-less and hunger items unless the official three-item screen stops the questionnaire. Never, Never, and No on the first three items assigns a raw score of 0 and marks the remaining items not administered.
  4. Finish the form, then read the USDA six-item raw score, status band, screen-stop note, and answer review together. Correct any response that used the wrong household or time period.

Interpreting Results:

Raw score Status Interpretation boundary
0 to 1 High or marginal food security At most one affirmative condition on this short form
2 to 4 Low food security Two through four affirmative conditions, inclusive
5 to 6 Very low food security Five or six affirmative conditions

A raw score of 1 remains in the high-or-marginal band, while 2 enters low food security. A raw score of 4 remains low, while 5 enters very low food security. These are fixed USDA short-form boundaries, not probabilities.

The label High or marginal food security combines two conditions and should not be shortened to “food secure” without context. The short form cannot describe children's experiences or the full severity range captured by longer modules.

Technical Details:

Each item contributes either 1 affirmative point or 0 points. There is no reverse scoring, weighting, averaging, or rounding. Structural not-administered responses contribute 0 only when the official skip or screen-stop branch applies.

Formula Core

The raw score is the count of affirmative conditions across the six item positions.

S = ∑i=16 ai , ai ∈ {0,1}
Item content Affirmative response worth 1 point Zero-point responses
Food did not last Often true or Sometimes true Never true or Don't know
Could not afford balanced meals Often true or Sometimes true Never true or Don't know
Adults cut or skipped meals Yes No or Don't know
Frequency of cutting or skipping Almost every month or Some months but not every month Only 1 or 2 months, Don't know, or legitimately not administered
Ate less than needed Yes No, Don't know, or official screen stop
Hungry but did not eat Yes No, Don't know, or official screen stop

Lookup Core

USDA also supplies a Rasch scale-score lookup for positive raw scores. It is an optional scale value, not a replacement for the status classification, and no interval-level score is defined for raw score 0.

Raw score Rasch scale score
0Not defined
12.86
24.19
35.27
46.30
57.54
68.48

Limitations and Privacy:

The six-item result is descriptive survey information. It cannot determine benefit eligibility, diagnose a health condition, assess an emergency food need, or substitute for the 18-item or 10-item module when greater precision or child-specific information is required.

Answers stay in the browser session unless a completed result is deliberately shared. A copied result link contains all six response slots in an encoded URL fragment after confirmation. Encoding is not encryption; anyone who receives the link may be able to read the answers.

Starting a new session clears the in-memory responses and removes the fragment. Protect copied links, downloads, screenshots, and exported answer reviews because they can reveal sensitive household hardship.

References: