Reduced Coping Strategies Index for Food Security Training Course

Course overview

Food-security teams often need a rapid, defensible measure of household food-related coping when market monitoring, nutrition screening and livelihood data do not tell the full story. The Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI) provides that measure, but weak question wording, incorrect recall periods, missing frequency values or unexamined severity weights can produce scores that are misleading or not comparable across locations and rounds. This course equips participants to design, calculate and interpret rCSI results in humanitarian assessments, routine monitoring and post-distribution monitoring.

Participants work through the full rCSI method: the five standard consumption-based coping strategies, seven-day frequency recording, standard severity weights, score calculation, data-cleaning rules and disaggregation. They learn when standard rCSI is appropriate, how to document contextual adaptations without compromising comparability, and how to distinguish rCSI from the Food Consumption Score, Household Hunger Scale and livelihood-based coping measures. The course also covers questionnaire programming, enumerator instructions, Excel-based scoring, threshold-setting cautions, trend analysis and triangulation with market, nutrition and protection evidence.

Delivery combines instructor-led technical sessions with worked datasets, questionnaire reviews, calculation drills and a realistic emergency-response case. Participants build an rCSI measurement package for a selected operational context: a field-ready question module, enumerator guidance, scoring workbook, data-quality checks, analysis plan and concise results brief. This practical output gives both the participant and their organisation a documented method that can be reviewed, adapted and deployed in future assessments.

The course is designed for professionals who already work with household survey data or food-security evidence and need to make rCSI results credible enough for targeting, programme adjustment, situation analysis and donor reporting.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a standard five-strategy rCSI questionnaire using a seven-day recall period and unambiguous response options
• Apply rCSI severity weights and calculate household scores from coping-strategy frequency data
• Configure rCSI questions, constraints and skip logic in KoboToolbox or ODK Collect
• Clean rCSI datasets using range checks, missing-value rules, duplicate checks and enumerator-error flags
• Analyse rCSI distributions, disaggregations and time trends in Microsoft Excel
• Interpret rCSI findings alongside Food Consumption Score, Household Hunger Scale, market and protection evidence
• Document contextual adaptations, limitations and comparability risks in an rCSI technical note
• Produce a field-ready rCSI measurement package and decision-focused results brief

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Food Security Programme Managers — who need defensible household indicators for targeting and programme adjustment
• MEAL Managers and Officers — who design monitoring systems and assure survey-data quality
• Food Security Assessment Analysts — who calculate, interpret and report household food-security indicators
• Humanitarian Programme Coordinators — who use assessment findings to prioritise response options across sectors
• Post-Distribution Monitoring Officers — who assess whether assistance is reducing food-related coping behaviours
• Research and Evaluation Specialists — who need a transparent, repeatable rCSI method for study protocols and reporting

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable reading household-survey questionnaires and working with tabular data in Microsoft Excel, including filters, formulas and basic charts. Familiarity with food-security assessment concepts such as food access, consumption, coping strategies, sampling terminology and disaggregation is expected. Participants should ideally have reviewed or supported at least one household assessment, monitoring exercise or post-distribution survey. Prior experience with KoboToolbox, ODK Collect, statistical software or advanced sampling is helpful but not required. The course teaches the rCSI calculation and practical data checks; it does not assume programming skills or prior specialist knowledge of the index.

Training methodology

The course uses short technical briefings followed by structured application. Participants inspect real rCSI modules, identify wording and comparability defects, configure questions in KoboToolbox or ODK Collect, and calculate scores from a supplied household dataset in Microsoft Excel. Small groups interpret contrasting emergency and post-distribution monitoring cases, testing rCSI findings against Food Consumption Score, market and protection evidence. Each day closes with a practical output, culminating in an individual application plan and a reviewed rCSI measurement package for the participant’s operating context.

Course outline

Day 1: rCSI purpose, construct and indicator boundaries

• Food-access coping behaviour as an observable household indicator
• Standard reduced Coping Strategies Index methodology
• The five standard food-based coping strategies
• Seven-day recall period and frequency-of-use recording
• Standard rCSI severity weights and their rationale
• Differences between rCSI, Food Consumption Score and Household Hunger Scale
• Appropriate and inappropriate uses of rCSI findings

Workshop: Participants diagnose errors in three sample food-security questionnaires and produce a corrected standard rCSI module.

Day 2: Questionnaire design and field data collection

• Behaviourally specific question wording for each rCSI strategy
• Translation, back-translation and cognitive testing procedures
• Household respondent selection and informed-consent scripting
• KoboToolbox form design for rCSI response capture
• ODK Collect constraints, required fields and validation messages
• Enumerator probing, neutrality and recall-aid techniques
• Pilot testing, supervision and fieldwork quality-control plans

Workshop: Participants configure and peer-test a mobile rCSI form, then produce enumerator instructions and a pilot-test checklist.

Day 3: Scoring, cleaning and descriptive analysis

• rCSI formula: frequency multiplied by severity weight
• Microsoft Excel scoring formulas and structured data tables
• Valid ranges for zero-to-seven coping frequencies
• Missing-data, refusal and inconsistent-response handling rules
• Duplicate records, outlier review and enumerator-pattern checks
• Distribution summaries, medians, proportions and disaggregation
• Score tables, charts and reproducible analysis documentation

Workshop: Participants clean a supplied household dataset and produce a scored rCSI workbook with documented quality checks and disaggregated charts.

Day 4: Interpretation, triangulation and decision use

• Reading high and low rCSI scores without overclaiming severity
• Trend comparison across survey rounds and seasonal periods
• Population-group disaggregation by sex, displacement and livelihood
• Triangulating rCSI with Food Consumption Score findings
• Using market-price, assistance and protection evidence in interpretation
• Threshold-setting limitations and local-context documentation
• Decision questions for targeting, response adaptation and monitoring

Workshop: Working from an emergency case file, participants produce an evidence matrix and draft three operational recommendations with stated limitations.

Day 5: Governance, reporting and operational deployment

• Contextual adaptation versus standard-indicator comparability
• rCSI metadata, version control and indicator reference sheets
• Data-protection practices for household assessment records
• WFP CARI Technical Guidance and rCSI reporting alignment
• Technical narrative writing for assessment reports and donor updates
• Review workflows for questionnaires, calculations and results approval
• Deployment planning for baseline, monitoring and post-distribution surveys

Workshop: Participants assemble and present a field-ready rCSI measurement package, receiving instructor feedback on its questionnaire, scoring plan and decision brief.

Tools & standards covered

KoboToolbox, ODK Collect, Microsoft Excel, WFP CARI Technical Guidance

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions