Hi,

I'm not an expert, but I could imagine that there is no clear-cut answer to your question, or a system of indicators respectively. To my mind, food in/security and the perception thereof is highly subjective and depends on the region/ social-ecological system in question as well as the institutional context.

Food security integrates different aspects (access, availability, utilisation, quality of food, etc.), so I would go along these lines and develop a set of questions related to each pillar.

You may want to look at Ford (2009), Vulnerability of Inuit food systems to food insecurity [...], Reg Env Change, who developed a conceptual model to examine the vulnerability of Inuit food systems. It might also be worth having a look at the Resilience Assessment (http://www.resalliance.org/workbook/) which gives hints on how to do assessments, what to respect, etc. Looking at so called Resilience indicators might also be of value, e.g. http://archive.ias.unu.edu/resource_centre/Indicators-of-resilience-in-sepls_ev.pdf To understand the commonalities between the terms vulnerability and resilience, this paper might be helpful: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss3/art11/

Hoping that's of any help, and wishing you best of luck,

Frieda

Dear Ms. Charlene Sharpe-Pryce ,

As I know Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) had an international and regional project to assess and measuring relationship between vulnerability and food insecurity. FAO has assessed the standard of food security and insecurity. I refer you to  FAO site as fallow:  

http://www.fao.org/home/en/

With the best wishes for you

Peyman

Thank you kindly Frieda and Peyman. I concur with the approach of developing context specific indicators based on the pillars of food security. I am aware of the Inuit case and will re-read. Peyman, thanks for pointing me back to the source - FAO.

Appreciate greatly.

Best,

Charlene

Hello Ms. Sharpe-Pryce,

Would like to learn more about what you have discovered in your readings and the direction your research will take.

Thanks

Angela

Hello,

I think the most important thing is to get the vulnerability and food security indicators. once you have these indicators you can measure the perception of the community by using an approach called perception index.  Its one of the best methods of measuring perception and attitudinal factors. You need to develop N-point Likert scale type of questions about the indicators of vulnerability and food security for a sample of respondents from the community. The responses from the sample are used in estimating the perception index for the community. Note that the sample should be a representation of the community otherwise it will be difficult to generalize.

Angela, definitely! Enoch, please let me have a contact (email for you). Thank you!

Best,

Charlene

Email ([email protected])

Dear Charlene,

You have some good advice here. I will take your question from a process-oriented perspective: What? Who? and How? There are no easy answers to perception-based analysis. Depends on the issue and the target audience. 

What/Why:  Since your question is based on that, you should first define and try to categorize how these terms are seen and defined by your target community - what factors do they use and then shape your query around those and what indicators and how sensitive they need to be to be able to measure if the community feels there are positive, negative or no change in terms of their experience or if these may be experienced at specific times and not all times and for some crops or for some aspects of agriculture.  

Who: You would also want to define your community into groups based on how their experiences can shed light on the issues from different angles. The factors that influence their perception i.ee. - gender, age, location, type of occupation (between farming and non-farming households), size of farm, income levels. And decide which of these might be key and important and for also making your study informative to the literature as well as for decision-making by them and their engagement in decision-making.  

Where the literature can help you is in on the best science and rigour you can use in defining and executing your assessment i.e. reducing overt and subtle bias in your questions so that your findings are more reliable. See one paper  that might be useful: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22805711. And another: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24157411. Here is how I tackled some aspect of this in some recent research: https://riopluscentre.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/gender-and-csa-background.pdf. 

And there are some recent studies using some aspects of PBA - http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaare14/. This paper seems relevant: Food Insecurity in Uganda: A perception based analysis by Almazea Fatima and Paulo Santos.

How: It also depends on if you are proposing to use a structured survey, focus groups or a combination of the two and that should be defined by the initial baseline review i mentioned first. Why? If literacy, timing and time and human resources are issues for you , then a survey seems less useful than a combined approach or even going for focus groups. Each choice has pros and cons and you would need to read thoroughly on that before deciding what suits you best and writing that justification clearly before proceeding. If literacy is an issue - images can also work. 

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Leisa,

How did I miss your excellent response? Thank you kindly. Indeed this is insightful. I appreciate. I am sorry I am only now seeing it.

Best,

Charlene