Simulating the Impact of Implementing Preliminary Food Security Screening Procedures in the Status of Forces Survey of Active Duty Members

Previous USDA, Economic Research Service research showed that active duty service members were nearly 2.5 times more likely to live in a food-insecure household than their socioeconomically similar civilian adult counterparts in 2018 and 2020. However, due to data limitations, this research was not able to account for the methodological differences between food security survey measurement techniques for the active duty military and civilian populations. One important methodological difference is that the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPSFSS), which is used to measure food security among civilians, uses screening procedures to reduce respondent burden, while the Status of Forces Survey of Active Duty Members (SOFS-A), used to measure food security among active duty service members, does not. The difference in screening procedures used in these two surveys may at least partially account for differences in previous estimates of food security across these groups. This report uses a novel application of a statistical approach that simulates the preliminary screening procedure that is absent from the military survey to adjust 2022 food insecurity prevalence estimates for service members, based on the SOFS-A. The statistical approach first uses civilian survey data from the 2022 CPS-FSS to construct a civilian sample that is representative of the service member sample and then applies logistic regression modeling to simulate the results of the CPS-FSS preliminary screening procedure and its impact on the food insecurity prevalence estimates of service members. The authors find that the simulated preliminary screening procedure reduces the prevalence of military food insecurity from 41.0 percent to 14.1 percent in 2022. Results from the simulation analysis may be considered a lower bound for the measured prevalence of food insecurity for the population of active duty service members since food security screening procedures generally lead to lower rates of food insecurity.