I am trying to figure out how the food security scale, FSRAWSCORE, was created. The description of the variable says the scale (0-10) reflects the number of affirmative responses to the ten insecurity questions (FSRUNOUT, FSNOTLAST…). However, I am not able to figure out how the affirmative questions were determined inasmuch as FSRUNOUT, for example, has 5 categories: often true, sometimes true, never true, unknown-refused, unknown-not ascertained, unknown-don’t know.
The FSRAWSCORE reports the number of “affirmative responses” to the ten food insecurity questions. FSRUNOUT, FSNOTLAST, FSBALANC,FSSKIP, FSSKIPNO, FSATELESS, FSHUNGRY, FSWEIGHT, FSNOTEAT, and FSNOTEATNO. Although FSSKIPNO and FSNOEATNO are continuous variables, a response is considered “affirmative” if number of days ranges from 1-30. For the other 8 variables, responses including “often true,” “sometimes true,” and “yes” are considered “affirmative”.