Development of a Tool to Assess Past Food Insecurity of Immigrant Latino Mothers

ObjectiveThe purpose is to describe the development and validation of a tool to measure the degree of past food insecurity in an immigrant US population.DesignFocus group discussions and a structured interview. As a first step, focus group discussions were conducted among immigrant Latino mothers. Based on these discussions, an 8-item tool was developed and pilot-tested in a convenience sample of mothers.SettingCalifornia.ParticipantsTwenty-two low-income Latino mothers with children, ages 4 to 5 years, in the focus groups and 85 low-income Latino and white mothers of young children in the structured interviews.AnalysesConstant comparative analysis, Cronbach α, Spearman correlations, Chi-square, and Kruskal-Wallis test.ResultsInternal consistency of the remaining 7 items was good (Cronbach α = 0.84). Evidence of convergent validity included significant correlations between past food insecurity and maternal education (r = -0.45, p<.0001), crowding in the mother’s childhood household (r = +0.30, p<.006), and past food insufficiency (r = +0.74, p<.0001). Foreign-born Latino mothers reported significantly greater levels of past food insecurity than US-born mothers, demonstrating discriminant validity (p<.01).Conclusions and ImplicationsThis tool may be useful to determine how past deprivation influences current food choices and other nutrition-related behaviors in low-income Latino immigrants.