Coping Strategies Index Coping Strategies Index

By: Haimanot MinwuyeFor Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirement for the PhD Course: Agricultural Systems and Food Security

(DEVRU810)At AAU, College of Development

Studies Oct, 2015

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Presentation Outline Presentation Outline

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Introduction Introduction Food security is too complex to be adequately

captured by a single measurement . Hence, it is measured by different tools(Jones,

Ngure, Pelto & Young, 2015, Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

These measurements are developed and used by different organizations, at different scales and for different purposes.

GHI is developed by IFPRI & used to measure the cause & effect of hunger at country or region level.

CSI is used by CARE & WFP to measure food access at the community level

Food balance sheets are tools used for measuring availability of food at the national level

Anthropometric indicators measure nutritional status of individuals (Maxwell, Coates & Vaitla 2013: 13).

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The measurements take three benchmarks: consumption benchmark poverty benchmark & nutritional benchmark.

Measurements which depend on these benchmarks measure food insecurity either directly or indirectly.

Food security measurements and indicators can draw data at national, regional, household, and/or individual levels.

And they can be used as a stand-alone measure or together with other measurements & capture some or all of the main components of food security: availability, access, utilization & stability.

For many years, age-adjusted per-capita caloric intake was considered as the “gold standard” for access to food at the household level (Hoddinott and Yohannes 2002, Weismann et al. 2006; Coates et al. 2007).

Overtime however, several measures have been developed to capture the access component. Some notable examples include:

Household Food Insecurity & Access Scale (HFIAS) Household Dietary Diversity Scale (HDDS) Household Hunger Scale (HHS) Coping Strategies Index (CSI) (Jones, Ngure, Pelto, & Young, 2015;

Frankenberger, 1992).

In sum, there are different kinds of food security measurements that measure the food security status of regions, nations, individuals & households.

These measurements sometimes differ in their conceptualization of food security, for what purpose they are best used and their source of data.

They also vary from simple indicators for which data can be quickly collected & easily analyzed to comprehensive measures that require detailed, time & resource- intensive data collection & sophisticated analytic skills (Jones, Ngure, Pelto, and Young, 2015).

Hence, it is important to identify the intended use of the tool to determine which metric one to use in our food security/insecurity study.

This presentation has tried to deal with coping strategies index: what it means, how to use it and its advantages and disadvantages.

Coping Strategy IndexCoping Strategy Index

What does It Mean

Coping StrategyCoping StrategyWhat dose it mean?

Snell & Staring (2001), defined Coping Strategies as “mechanisms to deal with a short-term insufficiency of food”.

And they can be “income soothing” or “consumption soothing” strategies. ◦ Income soothing strategies attempt to reduce

food insecurity through income diversification◦ Consumption soothing strategies attempt to

limit consumption of members of a household. In general, coping strategies are

activities people use as a means of getting through difficult times, brought by events affecting their livelihood & way of living.

People do various things when they do not have enough to eat.

But these coping strategies can be categorized under four generic lists . These are:

Dietary Change Strategies: switch food consumption from preferred foods to cheaper, less preferred substitutes.

Food Seeking Strategies: attempt to increase food supply using short-term strategies such as borrowing or purchasing on credit, begging or consuming wild foods, immature crops, or seed stocks.

Household Structure Strategies: if the available food is still inadequate to meet needs, households can try to reduce the number of people e.g sending household member to eat elsewhere.

Rationing Strategies: households can attempt to manage the shortfall by sharing the food available to the household (cutting portion size or the number of meals, favoring certain household members over others, or skipping whole days without eating).

Coping strategies vary by region, community, social class, ethnic group, household, gender, age and season (chambers, 1989; Thomas et.al 1989).

The types of strategies employed by households also will vary depending up on the severity & duration of the potentially disruptive conditions (Thomas et.al.1989).

Hence, their use as an indicator is location specific.

Coping Strategies Index (CSI) on the other hand, is a tool that measures what people do when they cannot access enough food.

CSI is based on the many possible answers to one single question: “What do you do when you don’t have adequate food, & don’t have the money to buy food?

The CSI was developed by CARE International & WFP to measure the access to food component of food security in Uganda, Ghana, & Kenya .

But now it is used in at least nine other African countries & several other countries in Middle East & Asia (Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

Types of Coping Strategy Indexes Is an index created by using

location-specific behavior & location or group-specific severity scores.

Some behavioral changes, such as harvesting and consuming crops before they are fully mature, are location-specific & confined to certain groups. Urban households have different options than rural households & fishermen have different options than farmers.

developed based on local contexts & can yield very detailed information about the food security situation in that specific context, location- or group. This kind of CSI has value in identifying the most vulnerable households for household targeting purposes, but is not very useful for geographic targeting purposes unless the areas being compared are very similar (Maxwell & Caldwell (2008)

The Original (Context-Specific) CSI

The Comparative (Reduced) (rCSI )

has been developed to compare food security across different contexts. Calculated using a specific set of behaviors with a universal set of severity weightings (It uses a standard set of five individual coping behaviors that can be employed by any household anywhere. The five standard coping strategies and their severity weightings are:

Eating Less-Preferred Foods (1)Borrowing Food/Money From Friends and Relatives (2)Limiting Portions at Mealtime (1)Limiting Adult Intake (3) andReducing the number of meals per day (1).

rCSI is less valuable in identifying the most vulnerable households in a given location as it contains less information. But it is very useful for comparing across crises or geographic targeting as it measures the same set of behaviors (Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

Constructing the Coping Constructing the Coping Strategies index: How Does it Strategies index: How Does it

work?work? The combination of information on the

frequency of coping behaviors & the severity of the strategies make a single score called CSI (Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

The CSI calculation includes four distinct steps:

Identify the different coping strategy behaviors Determine the frequency of strategies used Determine the severity & weighting of strategies

used Scoring/combining of frequencies & severity.

Frequency is measured ranging from “never’ (0) to “every day” (7)

Severity is weighted from “most severe” (4) to “least severe” (1) (Grobler, 2014; Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

Information is collected from community-level focus group discussion particularly from a person primarily responsible for the preparation & provision of food in the household.

Although there is no hard rule on how many focus groups is “enough,” a minimum of six to eight is recommended for each culture or location, with the main different social groups represented (Maxwell & Caldwell, 2008).

Step 1. Getting the Right List of Step 1. Getting the Right List of Coping Behaviors Coping Behaviors

The first step in the design process is to identify the locally relevant coping strategies in the study area.

However, only certain kinds of consumption-related behaviors belong in the CSI:

Make sure that the identified behavior is related specifically to food consumption

make sure that it is reversible. Consumption coping can be reversed when it is no longer needed.

Make sure that the behavior is used continuously. Consumption coping can be utilized as needed—they aren’t one off activities.

Make sure that the coping strategies are not routine ways of living.

Make sure that the list is the main set of coping strategies agreed by all the groups interviewed

Try to keep the list down to a feasible number (perhaps 12–15 at most).

The list should not include any similar or overlapping coping strategies.

Step 2. Counting the Frequency of Strategies

Experience with the CSI & other food consumption recall questionnaires indicate that many researchers have used 30 days or four weeks recall.

Nowadays however, there is a consensus that about a week is the longest time that people remember their behavior accurately.

Hence, questions are on the basis of a seven-day recall period & the main question becomes;◦ how often, in the past seven days, a

household had to rely on each individual coping behavior.

Consumption Coping Strategy Consumption Coping Strategy Responses Responses

Step 3. Severity: Weighting the Step 3. Severity: Weighting the StrategiesStrategies

◦ Different coping strategies are “weighted” differently, depending on how severe they are considered to be by the people who rely on them.

◦ The severity of individual behaviors is calculated by multiplying frequency by weight. Finally, the totals are added.

◦ The severity of coping strategies is a matter of perception. some strategies might be seen as perfectly normal behavior in some places & a great sources of shame in other places. e.g in some places borrowing food is not significant but in

other places it could indicate destitution or very severe food insecurity.

◦ Hence nothing should be assumed about the severity of a given strategy in a given location or culture. Instead, a series of focus group discussants should assign the perceived severity of all the coping behaviors they have listed and agreed.

Step 4. Scoring CSI ( Combining Step 4. Scoring CSI ( Combining Frequency & Severity for Analysis), An Frequency & Severity for Analysis), An actual Household from the Kenya pilot actual Household from the Kenya pilot

StudyStudy

Step 5: Interpreting the CSI Step 5: Interpreting the CSI Score: Score: The household in the above table has a

CSI score of 34. What does this mean? The number by itself does not tell us much.

If another household has a score of 55, we could clearly state that the household with a score of 34 is less food insecure (i.e. more food secure) than the household with a score of 55, provided that they are both from the same community, location, or culture for which this CSI tool was adapted.

CSI data is more powerful if it is analyzed and interpreted over multiple time periods, among multiple locations, and/or across specific groups (sub-populations).

For example, if a household has a score of 55 in July of a particular year, a score of 76 in September & a score of 92 in November of that same year, we can clearly state that household’s food security status is getting worse.

We can also look at the changes in specific coping behaviors that are being employed over this time period & determine how severe the situation is for this particular household.

Coping Strategy Patterns Coping Strategy Patterns There are different stages of coping

strategies and are divided into three distinct stages (Corbett, 1988).

Early stage of the crises (stage one), households employee the types of risk minimizing & loss management strategies.

This stage involves a low commitment of domestic resources enabling speedy recovery once the crisis has eased.

Stage two. ◦ In this stage households are

increasingly forced into a greater commitment of resources to meet subsistence needs.

◦ At this stage, a household’s vulnerability to food insecurity is extremely high.

Stage three strategies are signs of failure to cope

with the food crisis & usually involve destitution and distress migration (Corbett, 1988 cited in Frankenberger, 1992).

In sum, early coping strategies are not necessarily abnormal. They are reversible and cause no lasting damage.

However, more drastic strategies may permanently undermine a household’s future food security.

In addition, some coping strategies employed by women and girls, such as prostitution, tend to expose them to sexual violence, physical harm & higher risk of HIV infection.

Coping strategies may also affect the environment through over-exploitation natural resources.

CSI can be used for a variety of purposes such as: ◦ Provide a quick, current status indicator

of the extent of food insecurity.◦ Measure or monitor the impact of food

assistance programs.◦ Act as an early warning indicator of

future food crisis.◦ Identify areas & population groups where

needs are greatest.◦ Shed light on the causes of malnutrition  ◦ provide triangulation or verification of

other indicators.◦ CSI can be used to assess the validity of

household targeting criteria

Uses of Coping Strategy IndexUses of Coping Strategy Index

Strength of CSIStrength of CSI The CSI tool can be used in both qualitative and

quantitative applications and this offer a quick cross check on validity.

Coping strategies are quicker, simpler, and cheaper to collect information than the actual household food consumption levels. Hence, the CSI is an appropriate tool for emergency situations

The method requires neither highly trained enumerators nor complex analytical procedures.

It is easily understandable by both food policymakers & non-specialists.

CSI helps to capture some element of vulnerability which is the most important element of the definition of food security

Helps for household targeting rCSI helps for geographic targeting

Limitation of CSILimitation of CSI As with any information-gathering

technique that relies on respondent recall, in CSI there is the possibility that recall information is not accurate, or that the respondent, for the sake of personal benefit will “recall” more “coping” than actually took place.

For this reason, the tool is not recommended to be used repeatedly with the same sample of households.

CSI tries to see food insecurity status at the household level and it overlooks food insecurity status at the individual level.

Household measures are not appropriate for individually targeted interventions.

The CSI is originally developed to capture the nature of the behavioral response to food insecurity in a given context. Hence, the individual behaviors identified are likely to be specific to that context.

As a result, findings achieved using CSI are only locally applicable.

CSI in its context specific (original form) is relatively unhelpful in comparative analysis unlike the reduced Coping Strategy) (Kennedy, 2002).

The reduced CSI accurately reflects the food security status of households but it does not show detailed information about the range of food insecure households.

Hence, the reduced CSI is not useful for identifying vulnerable households as compared with the original CSI. However, the reduced index helps to compare the food security status of households across contexts.

Conclusion Conclusion There are different food insecurity

measurements used by different organizations, at different scales & for different purposes, using the defining domains of food availability, access, utilization & stability.

However, the focus of this presentation was about coping strategy index (CSI), what it means, how it works, its strength & limitation as well as its application.

coping strategy index is a measurement of behavior particularly of consumption behavior of households during food deficiency.

CSI indicator is context specific, hence, there is no designated cut-off point below which a household would be considered “food secure” & above which it would be considered “food insecure.”

But CSI can be used in cross-sectional analysis( Monitored over time) to determine which households are better off & which are worse off (the CSI can help to distinguish transitory & chronic food insecurity households).

◦ This is also important in household targeting

CSI in its original form has been criticized for being relatively unhelpful in comparative analysis. Therefore, a version of CSI (rCSI) was constructed to permit comparative analysis.

Now this rCSI is more widely used than the original form (Maxwell, Caldwell, and Langworthy 2008). Hence, the “reduced CSI” (rCSI)

CSI is quicker, simpler and cheaper to

collect data.

One person can administer the CSI of

one household.

The total time to administer survey

using CSI depends on the number of

households included in the sample. CSI

is a quantitative household survey but

can be adapted as a qualitative tool too.

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