Excerpts from the Report Introduction: In April 1995, the U.S. Bureau of the Census conducted the first collection of comprehensive food security data as a supplement to its regular Current Population Survey (CPS). With about 45,000 household interviews, this survey is the first to collect the special data needed to measure food insecurity and hunger in a nationally-representative sample of U.S. households. The Food and Consumer Service (FCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture led the effort to develop the Food Security Supplement to the CPS, building on research conducted at universities and elsewhere over the past decade. After the survey was conducted, the next step was to analyze the data to create measurement scales that gauge households' levels of severity of food insecurity and hunger. FCS contracted with Abt Associates Inc. and three subcontractors — the Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty, and Nutrition Policy; the Cornell University Division of Nutritional Sciences; and CAW and Associates — to carry out the scale construction analysis. The results of that analysis are presented in Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Summary Report of the Food Security Measurement Project, to which this report is a companion volume. The purpose of this report is to describe the analyses through which the food security scales and food security status variable were developed, as well as related tests of the reliability and validity of these measures.