PicFIT: A novel picture-based food insecurity measure for children ages 4 to 17 years

This study introduces the Picture Food Insecurity Task (PicFIT), an intuitive and quick picture-based assessment tool that uses culturally appropriate pictures to gauge children's food insecurity (FI) levels. This novel tool aims to address the limitations of existing household-level and text-based FI measures used with child respondents that may not capture children's individual experiences or be developmentally appropriate. Implemented with children ages 4-17 years (n=3,326) in rural Côte d'Ivoire, this study validated the PicFIT against two established FI measures: a household-level measure (HFIAS) administered to caregivers and a verbal-based measure (CFIES) administered to children. Additionally, we show that PicFIT scores correlate more significantly with children's physical development (height-for-age) than HFIAS and CFIES. These findings suggest that PicFIT is a promising measure for assessing FI in children.