Center for Research on Population and Health, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
J Nutr. 2019 Dec 1;149(12):2228-2235. doi: 10.1093/jn/nxz189.
Recent studies have shown that children are able to accurately describe their own experiences of food insecurity; however, few studies have quantified this experience.
We aimed to develop and validate a child food security scale to be used in Arabic-speaking countries.
As part of the Healthy Kitchens Healthy Children study on food security and nutrition in schools, 14 questions were administered to 5-15-y-old children (n = 1433) attending 4 UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees schools. We used statistical methods based on Item Response Theory to assess the internal validity of a proposed food security scale using these items. Further validation of the scale was conducted by examining associations with sociodemographic, economic, household food security, and diet diversity variables through logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, and school of the children.
A total of 1287 children (89.8%) provided complete responses to the questionnaire. Four items were dropped from the scale because of high infit statistics (>1.3) and high residual correlation with other items. The resulting 10-item scale had acceptable reliability (Cronbach α coefficient = 0.89). Children who reported food insecurity were more likely to be from food-insecure households (OR: 2.3; P < 0.001). Food-insecure children came from households with lower expenditures per capita (OR: 0.80; P = 0.007) and higher household crowding (OR: 1.70; P = 0.001), and had less educated mothers (OR: 0.89; P = 0.009), lower household diet diversity (OR: 0.85; P < 0.001), and lower household consumption of meat (OR: 0.89; P < 0.001) and fruit (OR: 0.95; P = 0.001). Child food insecurity was also associated with higher school absenteeism (OR: 1.64; P = 0.01) and lower academic grades in languages and science (P < 0.05).
Child food security was accurately measured through a 10-item scale. This tool is appropriate to assess child food insecurity experience directly with children, and can be used in school-based interventions, where obtaining data from parents may be cumbersome.
最近的研究表明，儿童能够准确描述自己的食物不安全经历；然而，很少有研究对这种经历进行量化。
我们旨在开发和验证一种用于阿拉伯语国家的儿童粮食安全量表。
作为学校粮食安全和营养健康厨房健康儿童研究的一部分，对 4 所联合国近东巴勒斯坦难民救济和工程处学校的 5-15 岁儿童（n=1433 人）进行了 14 个问题的问卷调查。我们使用基于项目反应理论的统计方法，根据这些项目评估了拟议粮食安全量表的内部有效性。通过逻辑回归模型，根据儿童的年龄、性别和学校，检查与社会人口、经济、家庭粮食安全和饮食多样性变量的关联，进一步验证了该量表的有效性。
共有 1287 名儿童（89.8%）完整回答了问卷。由于高 infit 统计值（>1.3）和与其他项目的高残余相关性，量表中有 4 个项目被删除。由此产生的 10 项量表具有可接受的可靠性（Cronbach α系数=0.89）。报告粮食不安全的儿童更有可能来自粮食不安全家庭（OR：2.3；P<0.001）。粮食不安全儿童来自人均支出较低的家庭（OR：0.80；P=0.007）和家庭拥挤程度较高的家庭（OR：1.70；P=0.001），母亲受教育程度较低的家庭（OR：0.89；P=0.009）、家庭饮食多样性较低（OR：0.85；P<0.001）、家庭肉类消费较低（OR：0.89；P<0.001）和水果消费较低（OR：0.95；P=0.001）。儿童粮食不安全也与较高的学校缺勤率（OR：1.64；P=0.01）和语言和科学成绩下降（P<0.05）有关。
通过 10 项量表准确测量了儿童粮食安全状况。该工具适合直接与儿童评估儿童粮食不安全经历，也可用于学校干预措施，在这些措施中，从家长那里获取数据可能很麻烦。
