Maes Kenneth C, Hadley Craig, Tesfaye Fikru, Shifferaw Selamawit, Tesfaye Yihenew Alemu
Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
J Nutr. 2009 Sep;139(9):1758-64. doi: 10.3945/jn.109.108548. Epub 2009 Jul 29.
Our objective in this study was to assess the validity and dependability of the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), which was developed for international use, among community health volunteers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The HFIAS was translated into Amharic and subsequently tested for content and face validity. This was followed by a quantitative validation study based on a representative sample (n = 99) of female community volunteers (HIV/AIDS home-based caregivers), with whom the HFIAS was administered at 3 time points over the course of 2008, in the context of the local and global "food crisis." By pooling observations across data collection rounds and accounting for intra-individual correlation in repeated measures, we found that the HFIAS performed well according to standards in the field. We also observed slight amelioration in reported food insecurity (FI) status over time, which seems paradoxical given the increasing inaccessibility of food over the same time period due to inflating prices and disappearing food aid. We attempted to resolve this paradox by appealing to self-report-related phenomena that arise in the context of longitudinal study designs: 1) observation bias, in which respondents change their reports according to changing expectations of the observer-respondent relationship or change their behavior in ways that ameliorate FI after baseline self-reports; and 2) "response shift," in which respondents change their reports according to reassessment of internal standards of FI. Our results are important for the validation of FI tools and for the sustainability of community health programs reliant on volunteerism in sub-Saharan Africa.
我们开展这项研究的目的是评估为国际使用而开发的家庭粮食不安全获取量表（HFIAS）在埃塞俄比亚亚的斯亚贝巴社区卫生志愿者中的有效性和可靠性。HFIAS被翻译成阿姆哈拉语，随后进行了内容和表面效度测试。接下来是一项基于具有代表性样本（n = 99）的女性社区志愿者（艾滋病毒/艾滋病家庭护理人员）的定量验证研究，在2008年期间的当地和全球“粮食危机”背景下，在3个时间点对这些志愿者进行了HFIAS调查。通过汇总各轮数据收集的观察结果并考虑重复测量中的个体内相关性，我们发现HFIAS在该领域的标准下表现良好。我们还观察到报告的粮食不安全（FI）状况随时间略有改善，鉴于同期因物价上涨和粮食援助消失导致粮食获取难度增加，这似乎自相矛盾。我们试图通过诉诸纵向研究设计背景下出现的与自我报告相关的现象来解决这一矛盾：1）观察偏差，即受访者根据对观察者 - 受访者关系不断变化的期望改变其报告，或在基线自我报告后改变其行为以改善FI；2）“反应转移”，即受访者根据对FI内部标准的重新评估改变其报告。我们的结果对于FI工具的验证以及撒哈拉以南非洲依赖志愿服务的社区卫生项目的可持续性具有重要意义。
