To assess the validity of the adapted Radimer/Cornell questionnaire to measure food insecurity in low-income urban households in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

The Radimer/Cornell questionnaire was modified and used to assess the applicability, validity and reliability of such a measure in a culturally different context of urban households in Tehran. Factor analysis and Cronbach's α were used to assess validity and reliability, respectively. Socio-economic characteristics and food consumption frequency of the household were used to assess the criterion validity of the questionnaire.

District 20 of Tehran.

A sample of 250 Iranian nuclear households with at least one child aged 1–18 years and a non-pregnant, non-lactating woman of reproductive age, selected through a multistage random sampling method.

Three scales, labelled as household, individual and child hunger, were extracted through factor analysis using varimax rotation. Internal consistency of the scales was 0.897, 0.820 and 0.796, respectively. Individual insecurity and child hunger were inversely correlated with monthly per capita income, father's education, mother's education and father's occupational status, and positively correlated with household size, as expected. However, household insecurity did not follow the same pattern. Consumption frequency of fruits, vegetables, dairy, red meat and rice declined as food insecurity status worsened, while bread and potato consumption increased.

The results show that a modified version of the Radimer/Cornell questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument to measure household food insecurity in a culturally different context. However, further modifications seem necessary to measure food insecurity at household level. Results lend support to the utility and applicability of experience-based measures in varying cultural communities.