How to Collect and Analyse the Required Data
Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:
1) Identify the most frequent coping strategies which the target householdsuse when they do not have enough food and do not have enough money to buy food. While you can take advantage of a list of the most common strategies included in WFP's guidance (see below) or those identified by the Food Security Cluster (if available), you might need to adjust the list to make it more context-specific, so that only strategies that are locally used during food insecure timesare included in the assessment. Thereis no point in asking people about strategies they do not use or strategies that are common even in food secure periods, such as collecting wild food in the river.
2) Identify how "severe" each of these individual coping strategies is considered to be. Such information needs to be collected from community-level focus group discussions, providing a "weight" for the perceived severity of each strategy (1 - low, 2 - medium, 3 - severe).
3) Conduct individual interviews with the representatives of a representative sample of the target households toassess how frequently people had to use these strategies in the assessed recall period (e.g. twice in the past 7 days).
4) During the data analysis, for each coping strategy, multiply the assigned "weight" by its frequency, receiving the "score" per each strategy. Do this individually per each respondent.
5) By summing up the scores of all assessed strategies you will receive the total Coping Strategy Index score. A high score means extensive use of negative coping strategies and hence increased food insecurity.
6) The scores are usually divided into three categories: low CSI score (0-50), medium (51-100) and high (over 100). However, these thresholds often need to be modified based on the context and the number of coping strategies you assess (e.g. 0-40; 41-80; and over 80). If you use the indicator for your baseline/ endline, you will be aiming to reduce the percentage of households in the highest CSI category.
7) To determine the indicator's value, divide the number of respondents in the highest CSI category by the total number of respondents. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.
