Author:

• Leonardo Pozza dos Santos - Santos, L.P. - Pelotas, RS - Programa de Pós Graduação em Epidemiologia/UFPel - <leonardo_pozza@yahoo.com.br>

Co-author(s):

• Mariana Gamino da Costa - Costa, M.G. - Faculdade de Nutrição/UFPEL - <mamahgamino@ymail.com>
• Janaína Vieira dos Santos - Santos, J.V. - Programa de Pós Graduação em Epidemiologia/UFPel - <jsantos.epi@gmail.com>
• Ivana Loraine Lindemann - Lindemann, I.L. - Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul - Faculdade de Nutrição/UFPel - <ivanaloraine@hotmail.com>
• DENISE PETRUCCI GIGANTE - GIGANTE, D.P. - Programa de Pós Graduação em Epidemiologia/UFPel - <denisepgigante@gmail.com>

Thematic Area:

Alimentação, Nutrição e Saúde

Abstract:

Objectives: To compare the short version of the food security, recommended by FAO, and the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (Escala Brasileira de Inseguranca Alimentar - EBIA).
Methods: It was made use of a questionnaire with two different scales, thus demographic and socioeconomic information. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy indices have been obtained through the comparison of the values of the scales. In order to validate the concordance between both instruments, the Kappa test has been applied.
Results: Out of the 230 families that have been studied, over half of them would live with some level of food insecurity, according to EBIA, and only one fourth of the samples would live in this situation, according to the short version. The comparison between the scales shows a moderate accordance as for the food insecurity food analysis, as a whole, as for a possible hunger situation analysis, even when changing the cut-off in both of them. In the validation parameters analysis, it was found that the short version presents a low level of sensibility and a high level of specificity in relation to EBIA.
Conclusion: the short version presents a low level of accordance when compared to EBIA. Therefore, it is necessary to validate a smaller instrument of fast and easy application in relation to EBIA.

Keywords:

Food and nutritional security validation studies scales

Content:

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