2.2.3. Coping Strategy Index

Households adopt several coping strategies, and, hence, food insecurity can be measured using a coping strategy index (CSI); a previous study also used this technique [59]. This method measures the behavioral changes made at the household level in adjusting to food insecurity, while the frequency of a household’s coping strategies addresses a shortage in food supply and is a rapid assessment of a household’s current food security. A higher score in the CSI indicates greater food insecurity. This study examined a total of 12 coping strategies, aggregated into four basic groups: (1) Dietary change, e.g., eating cheaper food; (2) increasing access to the short-term food supply, e.g., borrowing or asking others for help; (3) decreasing the number of people to feed, e.g., sending family members elsewhere; (4) rationing food, e.g., family members skipping meals or prioritizing feeding kids. These four basic food coping strategies were aggregated and weighted into an index that summarized the indicators of food insecurity. The individual responses were recorded into five Likert scales, and each category was weighted, where 1 = no adopted category, 2 = one time per week adopted, 3 = 1–2 times per week adopted, 4 = 3–6 times/week adopted, and 5 = adopted all the time. Relative weights were assigned to each category depending on the level of severity. A high score of “5” indicates a more severe category, while “4” indicates relatively lower severity. The relative weights were multiplied with the individual responses. Finally, scores for the relative frequency of how often households relied on different coping strategies were assigned, as suggested by Maxwell in his two different studies [40,59] (see Table A1).