The Challenge
Household food insecurity (FI), the inability to access enough food for an active and healthy life, affects at least 12% of the Australian population, with much higher rates in more disadvantaged areas and for certain subgroups of the population. FI is a significant public health and social issue. It may particularly impact upon children in the short- and long-term via profound negative impacts on health and wellbeing. However, it is difficult to tackle this problem when its extent and nature is not fully explored, particularly since current measurement approaches to child food insecurity in Australia are lacking.
Despite caregivers’ best efforts to protect their children from the effects of food insecurity, children do have distinct and unique experiences of FI. Caregivers may be unaware of key aspects of the FI experience for children, particularly its psychological consequences. Traditional ways of measuring child FI generally use parent-report measures. But these approaches do not capture the full breadth of children’s FI experiences.
As a result, child-report measures to assess FI status at both individual and household-level have been developed. One of these child-report measures, the 10-item Child Food Insecurity Experiences Scale (CFIES), was recently created by key international researchers in the field drawing on their extensive qualitative work with children. This may be a candidate measure to use in Australia, potentially in both research and practice settings. However, there is a need to comprehensively test this measure with children prior to establishing if it is fit-for-purpose.
Our Approach
A qualitative cognitive interview study will help to establish how Queensland children, aged 8 to 12 years, understand key concepts and terms, response categories, and reference time periods used within the CFIES.
Confidential 30 min to 1 hr face-to-face interviews with children aged 8 to 12 years will investigate how they understand and what they think about the 10-item CFIES. We frame these interviews as a “detective quest” where children help us investigate these questions together and provide their unique insights. Children are invited to use materials from our “detective kit” which includes drawing materials, photo prompts, emojis and puppets to help facilitate their participation through verbal and non-verbal means.
This study will help to establish if the CFIES can be validly used in an Australian setting to better understand the issue of child FI, from children’s perspectives. This project will add important validity data about a child-report tool which may help us to extend understanding of child FI through quantitative research.
A later research phase using focus groups will explore how a child-report FI measure may be practically and ethically used across different settings in which children live, play, heal and learn. A child-report FI measure may provide a conduit for children to include their voices and perspectives about a serious social and health issue and demonstrate that children’s perspectives on their own lives seriously matter to adults.
Recruiting for interviews now!
We are eager to speak with children aged 8 to 12 years who live in the greater Brisbane area. We invite families from a wide range of situations to take part in this research. This includes those who have worried about running out of food, changed what they are eating because of money or have gone without food and those who have not had any of these experiences.
More information, including sign up details, is available by cling through to the project webpage: https://linktr.ee/kidsattable or via scanning the QR code below.
Want to get in touch with us?
If you’d like to find out more about the project, please use the contact form below. Alternatively, you can email a.45.taylor@hdr.qut.edu.au or phone +61 493 137 680. We’d love to hear from you!
