Determining food insecurity: An application of the rasch model with household survey data in Uganda

Abraham Owino*, Ronald Wesonga, Fabian Nabugoomu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The inexplicable nature of food insecurity in parts of Uganda and worldwide necessitated an investigation into the nature, extent, and differentials of household food security. The main objective of this study was to examine the food security dynamics and model household food insecurity. The Rasch modelling approach was employed on a dataset from a sample of 1175 (Tororo = 577; Busia = 598) randomly selected households in the year 2010. All households provided responses to the food security questions and none was omitted from the analysis. At 5 percent level of significance the analysis indicated that Tororo district average food security assessment (0.137 ± 0.181) was lower than that for Busia district (0.768 ± 0.177). All the mean square fit statistics were in the range of 0.5 to 1.5, and none of them showed any signs of distortion, degradation, or less productivity for measurement. This confirmed that items used in this study were very productive for measurement of food security in the study area. The study recommends further analysis where item responses are ordered polytomous rather than the dichotomous item response functions used. Furthermore, consideration should be given to fit models that allow for different latent distributions for households with children and those without children and possibly other subgroups of respondents.

Original languageEnglish
Article number121269
JournalInternational Journal of Food Science
Volume2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Food Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Determining food insecurity: An application of the rasch model with household survey data in Uganda'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this