Frontiers of household water insecurity metrics: severity, adaptation and resilience

Abstract

The measurement of household-level and individual-level water insecurity has accelerated over the past 5 years through innovation and dissemination of new survey-based experiential psychometric scales modelled after food insecurity scales. These measures offer needed insight into the relative frequency of various dimensions of water problems experienced by households or individuals. But they currently tell us nothing about the severity of these experiences, mitigating behaviours (ie, adaptation) or the effectiveness of water-related behaviours (ie, resilience). Given the magnitude of the global challenge to provide water security for all, we propose a low-cost, theoretically grounded modification to common water insecurity metrics in order to capture information about severity, adaptation and resilience. We also discuss ongoing challenges in cost-effective measurement related to multidimensionality, water affordability and perception of water quality for maximising the impact and sustainability of water supply interventions. The next generation of water insecurity metrics promises better monitoring and evaluation tools—particularly in the context of rapid global environmental change—once scale reliability across diverse contexts is better characterised.

Toward a more systematic understanding of water insecurity coping strategies: insights from 11 global sites

“…These concerns were acknowledged in a recent paper proposing an update to water insecurity measurement tools. 37 Here, we address these concerns with a Water Insecurity Coping Strategies Assessment Toolkit ( online supplemental materials 1 ), which we advise using longitudinally in the same context to assess incidence, prevalence, and severity of coping.…”

Navigating end-user perceptions: development and initial psychometric properties of a water quality perception scale

“…How, when, and why exactly water insecurity is related to water quality perceptions is an interesting empirical and theoretical question in need of answers. This may be answered by examining different aspects of water insecurity (Stoler et al, 2023) and their linkages to water quality perceptions. Additional estimates of convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the WQPS are needed highlighting the limitations to this initial report.…”

“…By complementing other similar measures, such as the HWISE scale, it may augment assessment of the myriad factors related to water security. Comprehensive, consistent and accurate measurement of water quality are at an important intersection between the engineering, social, policy, and human aspects of water security and sustainability (Weems et al, 2023) and helps answer the call for more comprehensive assessment (Stoler et al, 2023). Public perception is often an enigma for utility providers.…”

Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

“…Others have proposed similar experiential scales to measure sanitation and hygiene insecurity (Caruso et al, 2017;Ross et al, 2022), but these tools have not yet been validated in cross-cultural contexts. Next-generation versions of these scales should ideally also capture the relative severity of WASH disruptions, and how people are adapting to them to help guide integration of resilience-building into WASH interventions (Sidote et al, 2022;Stoler et al, 2023). For example, Ross (2022) proposed an important starting point for quantifying the economic value of water insecurity experiences into water-adjusted person-years using the respondent's perceived importance or…”