Coping strategies index

The Coping Strategies Index (CSI) is “an indicator of household food security”. It is reported as “relatively simple and quick to use, straightforward to understand and correlates well with more complex indicators”.

It is based on asking people: “What do you do when you don’t have adequate food, and don’t have enough money to buy food?” Adequate is based on people’s own perceptions.

The tool has been used to generate quantitative data for programme decision makers, particularly in emergency humanitarian responses. It was developed by WFP and CARE and involves four steps:

  1. Identify locally relevant coping strategies  Use focus groups to identify the strategies people in a certain area use when they don’t have enough food.
  2. Household survey  Carry out a household survey. Ask households how many times in the last seven days they had to use each strategy identified in step 1. (Seven days has proved to generate better data than 30 days.)
  3. Weighting the strategies  Use focus groups to ‘weight’ the different strategies depending on how severe they are considered to be by the people who use them. Use a scale of 1 to 4. This can be combined with Step 1.
  4. Scoring  Generate a CSI score for each household by multiplying the number of days per week a strategy is used by the weight for that strategy. Household scores can be aggregated and analysed along with other criteria, like ethnicity, location or assistance received.

By 2008, the technique has been used in at least 12 African countries and others in the Middle East and Asia. Research has shown that a ‘universal’ set of the same five strategies works in different places. This makes comparison between sites easier.

Results

The approach has been used to provide a quick, real-time indicator of the extent of food insecurity, useful for informing programme decisions. It can also provide data about a programme’s impact or for early warning.

A study in Kenya found that “the CSI correlated significantly with food frequency, asset ownership, income, and other measures of livelihood security.” (2008: 37) In Southern Africa and Sri Lanka, CSI data has been used to quantify and compare differences between programme participants’ food security at the beginning and end of a programme; and between programme participants and non-participants; and between households in different countries. (2008: 40-43)

“… traditional food security indicators usually focus only on a specific aspect of food security (utilization, access or production). The CSI … cross-cuts these dimensions and provides a more comprehensive picture of the food security situation.” (Innocenti, 2006: 42)

More information

The Coping Strategies Index, Field Methods Manual, Second Edition, 2008, Daniel Maxwell and Richard Caldwell