Assessment of Content Validity and Internal Consistency and Reliability of Direct Experience-Based Elderly Food Insecurity Measurement Tool for Iranian Elders

Food security is recognized as one of the major health, social, economic and political issues. Different factors can affect food security status at different levels. Meanwhile, some special conditions pose a challenge for the elderly to enjoy food security. In this study, considering that there is no valid measurement tool for assessing food insecurity of the elderly in Iran, validity of the elderly food- security measurement tool was examined in terms of both content validity and internal consistency and reliability. In this study, following the principles of HFIAS (Household Food Insecurity Access Scale Indicator Guide, Version 3) and ‘Technical Guide to Developing a Direct, Experience-based Measurement Tool for Household Food Insecurity’, five steps were taken for examining content validity and internal consistency and reliability including: translation into Farsi, reviewing with key informants, refining the questionnaire through interviewing with 20 representatives of the survey population, estimation of Cronbach's α and examining the back-translated items. The questionnaire was modified based on the results of each step. Cronbach's α of this questionnaire turned out to be 0.858. The results also showed that 7, 3, 5 and 5 participants considered food secure, food insecure without hunger, food insecure with moderate hunger, and food insecure with severe hunger respectively. This study provides a content-valid and internally-consistent pre-measurement tool for assessment of food insecurity among the elderly in Iran. However, it is recommended that other validation processes including construct and criterion validation be carried out in a larger society in view of different factors which have an impact on food security status.