Measuring the incidence and intensity of food insecurity has long been a challenge due to its conceptual and practical complexity. Several scholars have proposed objective and subjective measurements to monitor or evaluate food in(security) programs. While the objective measurements such as food caloric intake and food expenditure are data demanding and costly, the subjective measurements such as experience-based food insecurity scales that use direct responses to food shortage questions can be prone to biases and misreporting due to respondents’ unobservable economic and social desirability concerns. This paper reports the biases when food shortage is asked through direct questions and indirect interviews using a list experiment approach—an approach widely used to elicit the true responses of respondents for a sensitive question. The list experiment was conducted on four selected self-reported food insecurity survey questions which represent both the availability (incidence) and access (intensity) dimensions of food security. The sample households were drawn from two districts in Northern Ethiopia where households are chronically food insecure and several projects have been implemented. The results indicate the existence of significant bias in self-reported food insecurity responses when implemented through direct interviews. The results also show that the biases, particularly the ones related to incidence questions, have led to erroneous conclusion about the impact of a food security program—the Ethiopian Household Asset Building (HAB) program. Based on the findings, the paper highlights possible options and precautionary actions for measuring food insecurity using self-reported questions.

中文翻译：

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自我报告的粮食不安全测量中的偏差：列表实验方法

由于其概念和实践的复杂性，衡量粮食不安全的发生率和强度长期以来一直是一项挑战。几位学者提出了客观和主观的衡量标准来监测或评估（安全）计划中的食品。虽然食物热量摄入和食物支出等客观衡量标准需要大量数据且成本高昂，但基于经验的粮食不安全量表等主观衡量标准对粮食短缺问题使用直接反应，由于受访者不可观察的经济状况，容易产生偏差和误报。和社会合意性问题。本文使用列表实验方法（一种广泛用于引出受访者对敏感问题的真实回答的方法）通过直接问题和间接访谈来询问食品短缺时的偏见。清单实验是针对四个选定的自我报告的粮食不安全调查问题进行的，这些问题代表了粮食安全的可用性（发生率）和获取（强度）维度。样本家庭来自埃塞俄比亚北部的两个地区，这些地区的家庭长期处于粮食不安全状态，并且已经实施了几个项目。结果表明，在通过直接访谈实施时，自我报告的粮食不安全应对措施存在重大偏差。结果还表明，偏见，尤其是与发生率问题相关的偏见，导致了关于粮食安全计划——埃塞俄比亚家庭资产建设 (HAB) 计划影响的错误结论。根据调查结果，