Document Type
Article
Abstract
The 12-item Water Insecurity Experiences Scales provide high resolution, cross-context equivalent data on household and individual water insecurity. A 4-item, 1-minute version of the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE-4) Scale has proven useful for understanding the prevalence of household water insecurity experiences when limited resources preclude the use of the HWISE-12 Scale. Herein, we tested the validity of an analogous four-item version of the Individual Water Insecurity Experiences Scale (IWISE-4) for measuring the prevalence of individual water insecurity when limited resources prevent implementation of the IWISE-12 Scale. We used data from adults in 31 low- and middle-income countries (n=43,970) to assess internal consistency, cross-country equivalence, predictive accuracy, and construct validity of the IWISE-4. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that the IWISE-4 (range 0–12) predicted individual water insecurity with ≥95% accuracy in every country. An IWISE-4 cut-point of ≥4 provided the closest approximation of water insecurity prevalence as predicted by the IWISE-12 scale (cut-point ≥12), correctly classifying 87.1–98.5% of adults across countries, and was similarly associated with water quality dissatisfaction, a measure of construct validity. Although the IWISE-4 Scale cannot measure the severity of water insecurity, the IWISE-4 provides suitable and cross-country equivalent estimates of the prevalence of individual water insecurity.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, Volume 12, Issue 9, 2022, pages 647-658.
Rights
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).