rCSI - Reduced Coping Strategy Index

What: The Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI) is a proxy indicator of household food insecurity. It considers both the frequency and severity of five pre-selected coping strategies that the household used in the seven days prior to the survey. It is a simplified version of the full Coping Strategies Index indicator that looks at the extent to which people are having to lower their intake and quality of food or need to borrow food or money from family or friends. Why: The Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI) is an indicator of household food security that is relatively simple and quick to use, straightforward to understand, and correlates well with more complex measures of food security. Extensive research has demonstrated that the “reduced” CSI reflects food insecurity nearly as well as the “full” or context-specific CSI, and thus can be used as a food security measure across different contexts.

When:

The rCSI, (similar to the CSI) can be used as a measure of the impact of both emergency and long term interventions. As a lighter tool the rCSI has the advantage of being quicker to use while still reflecting food security nearly as well as the “full” CSI. In most cases for project monitoring purposes the rCSI can be used instead of the longer CSI.

When looking at indicators to measure as part of assessment and targeting processes though the tradeoff is that the reduced CSI is less valuable in identifying the most vulnerable households in a given location because it contains less information—particularly extreme behaviors that may flag greatly increased levels of food insecurity.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) Conduct individual interviews with a representative sample of the target group members, asking them how many times (in the previous 7 days) they had to use the coping strategies listed below. Use the questions provided in the left column below. Record the frequency by entering relevant number (e.g. 0 – did not have to use the coping strategy; 2 – had to use it twice; 7 – had to use it every day in the past 7 days).

2) During the data analysis, for each coping strategy, multiply the ‘frequency’ by the assigned ‘severity weight’, thereby getting a ‘weighted score’ per each strategy.

3) Add up the scores of all assessed strategies to receive the household’s RCSI score. A high score means an extensive use of negative coping strategies and hence increased food insecurity (the maximum score for the RCSI is 56; this would happen if a household used all five strategies every day for the last 7 days).

4) To calculate the indicator’s value, add the RCSI scores of all the surveyed households and divide this by the total number of surveyed households.

RCSI should be used together with other evidence, especially the Household Hunger Score (HHS), in severe and protracted food security crisis situations.

Disaggregate the data by wealth, location and other vulnerability criteria.

The rCSI tool can also be used to track the impact on household food security of longer-term interventions. Be aware that the rCSI is sensitive to short-term changes such as seasonality, or the effects of shocks, however major or minor. If being used to track long-term interventions, ensure that short-term influences such as seasonality are factored out of the analysis (for example, by conducting a baseline survey and an impact evaluation survey at the same time of the year/harvest cycle, etc.).

This indicator just tracks average rCSI scores but if needed, rCSI categories can be defined and aligned with IPC Phases as follows:

1. Calculate the percentage of households belonging in each rCSI category defined by the following cut-offs: 0-3, 4-18, and 19 and above which correspond to IPC Phases 1, 2 and 3 and above respectively.

2. If food insecurity in the area is high, and percentage in Phase 3+ based on rCSI is elevated, it may be useful to separate the group in Phase 3 and higher into two groups based on a tentative cut-off developed for Phase 4. In this case the households should be divided in four categories: 0-3, 4-18, 19-42, and 43 and above. These categories correspond to IPC Phases 1, 2, 3 and 4 and higher respectively.