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Choose the household composition for the official scoring thresholds and child-referenced questions.
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{{ currentQuestion.stage }} · Think about the past 12 months.

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U.S. Adult Food Security Survey Module Classify adult household food security from the official 10-item USDA module with three-stage screeners, raw-score bands, and local scoring.
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Household food security concerns reliable access to enough food for active, healthy living. The measure focuses on constraints caused by limited money and resources, not on preferred foods, cooking habits, body weight, or whether every meal meets nutrition guidance.

The U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module uses a 12-month recall period and asks an adult respondent about household-level conditions, adult experiences, and, when children under 18 are present, child experiences. Questions progress from worry and food not lasting to reduced intake and the most severe reported conditions.

Household compositionApplicable scaleWhat it represents
No children under 1810 household and adult itemsFood-security conditions among household adults
One or more children under 1818 household, adult, and child itemsFood-security conditions across the household

Official screeners reduce burden by ending later stages when earlier answers contain no affirmative signs of food hardship. A full administration can keep the later stages available for validation work in a new survey context. Either path uses the same affirmative-response coding and status thresholds.

The status is a standardized survey classification. It can support population research, service planning, or a private household review, but it does not diagnose illness, measure nutrient adequacy, determine benefit eligibility, establish legal status, or identify why access was difficult.

Household composition and administration method must be recorded with the result. The 10-item and 18-item scales have different upper ranges and different low-to-very-low boundaries, so a raw number without its applicable scale can be misleading.

How to Use This Tool:

Set household composition before starting because it controls whether child-referenced questions belong to the applicable score.

  1. Choose whether anyone under age 18 lives in the household.
  2. Use Official screeners for ordinary administration. Choose Full administration only when the study design requires every stage, such as validation in a new survey context.
  3. Answer each reached item for the same household and previous-12-month period. Frequency follow-ups appear only after the related parent answer.
  4. Finish when all applicable items are resolved, then confirm that the result names the correct 10-item or 18-item scale before interpreting the status.

Interpreting Results:

Higher raw scores mean that more USDA-defined food-hardship conditions were reported. High and Marginal food security form the broader Food secure group; Low and Very low food security form the Food insecure group.

Screened-out items contribute zero under the official design. They mean that the earlier answers did not require those questions, not that a respondent manually answered No to each one. Review the screener trace when the administration path matters for research or service documentation.

Answers stay in the current browser tab, are not sent to a server, and are not written into the URL. Starting over clears the in-memory responses.

Technical Details:

USDA scoring converts each response into a binary contribution. Yes, often, sometimes, almost every month, and some months but not every month are affirmative where offered. Nonaffirmative answers, don't know, and screened-out items contribute zero.

Formula Core

The applicable raw score is the sum of binary affirmative indicators over 10 items when no children are present or 18 items when children are present.

R=∑i=1nai,n∈{10,18}

Each ai is 1 for an affirmative response and 0 otherwise. The raw score is an integer with no weighting or rounding.

Rule Core

StatusNo children, 10 itemsWith children, 18 itemsBroad group
High food security00Food secure
Marginal food security1 to 21 to 2Food secure
Low food security3 to 53 to 7Food insecure
Very low food security6 to 108 to 18Food insecure

The screened path always begins with three adult-stage items. An affirmative answer opens the next adult stage; another affirmative answer there opens Adult Stage 3. When children are present, three child-stage items follow the resolved adult path, and any affirmative child-stage response opens the final child stage. Full administration bypasses the stage screeners but still keeps conditional frequency follow-ups tied to their parent questions.

Only one score is applicable: the 10-item adult/household score when no children are present or the full 18-item household score when children are present. Keeping both computed ranges available for audit must not be mistaken for two classifications of the same household.

Worked Examples:

Household without children at the boundary

Six affirmative responses on the applicable 10-item scale produce a raw score of 6. The result is Very low food security because that scale's final band begins at 6.

Household with children at the same number

Six affirmative responses on the applicable 18-item scale produce Low food security, whose range is 3 to 7. Very low food security begins at 8 on this scale. The comparison shows why household composition must accompany the raw score.

References: