Abstract

SALGADO, Tania; CANDELA, Yngrid  and  BERNAL, Jennifer. Use of mixed methods to evaluate access to food and nutritional food vulnerability in risk groups. An Venez Nutr [online]. 2011, vol.24, n.2, pp.65-71. ISSN 0798-0752.

Mixed quali-quantitative methods allow the design of instruments that capture personal perceptions that quantify food and/or nutrition situations. The aim of this paper is to report how the use of mixed methods could be useful in constructing scales that identifies food and nutrition themes. We selected four scales based on mixed methods. A first qualitative phase in our construction: from in-depth-interviews, dimensions arose that were used to construct items similar to a Likert scale. A second quantitative phase, allowed to test and refine scales, using factor analysis and reliability test a-Cronbach. The scales designed let to measure household food security, food vulnerability in older people and the satisfaction of mothers/ caregivers of childcare centers. Each tool contains 12, 19, 11 and 19 items respectively, which explain 90, 61, 69 and 73 % of the variance in each scale, with a reliability of 0.92, 0.74, 0.77 and 0.77. These instruments are practical, easy to apply, valid and trustworthy. They are useful to measure and evaluate public nutrition programs.

Keywords : scales; evaluation; measure; food and nutrition policies; risk groups; Venezuela.

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