Towards global monitoring: equating the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) and food insecurity scales in Latin America

Abstract: In order to face food insecurity as a global phenomenon, it is essential to rely on measurement tools that guarantee comparability across countries. Although the official indicators adopted by the United Nations in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) already embeds cross-country comparability, other experiential scales of food insecurity currently employ national thresholds and issues of comparability thus arise. In this work we address comparability of food insecurity experience-based scales by presenting two different studies. The first one involves the FIES and three national scales (ELCSA, EMSA and EBIA) currently included in national surveys in Guatemala, Ecuador, Mexico and Brazil. The second study concerns the adult and children versions of these national scales. Different methods from the equating practice of the educational testing field are explored: classical and based on the Item Response Theory (IRT).