Using high-frequency data to measure the resilience metrics for food security and women's dietary diversity in Uganda

Several debates and discussions have emerged in contemporary literature on the best method, data, and timing to measure the resilience concept. We contribute to this discussion by using high-frequency data collected in short spans of two to three months. We also validate if RIMA II can be used to estimate the resilience of rural households using high-frequency data collected within the year. We compare the resilience of families estimated using RIMA II with the subjective self-evaluated resilience score and the qualitative measures from focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Our qualitative and quantitative assessment establishes that the resilience concept does change within six months. The results are consistent when using two different weighting approaches to estimating the resilience capacity index using RIMA II. The resilience capacity index calculated from RIMA-II is also moderately comparable to the subjective self-evaluated resilience score estimated. Anecdotes from qualitative interviews also show that within the year, households can recover from some shocks and bounce back to their previous level of well-being using different coping strategies. Overall, this study reveals the possibility of employing the RIMA-II metrics for measuring resilience with data collected in six months durations to understand the dynamic and complex nature of resilience amongst rural households.