| Cutoff Rule | 5 | WHO/UNICEF joint statement (2009) and Sphere Handbook (2018) | A population-specific rule for classifying acute malnutrition from MUAC or other anthropometric measurements. MUAC cutoffs differ by age, sex, and physiological state; applying a rule outside its target population produces misclassification. |
| FCS Food Group | 9 | WFP VAM Food Consumption Analysis (2008) | The eight scored food groups used by the WFP Food Consumption Score (FCS), plus condiments as a non-scoring screener. Each group is scored by the number of days (0-7) the household consumed items from that group in the past seven days; the group's weight converts days-of-consumption into the composite FCS. Meat, fish, and eggs form a single combined protein group in the standard WFP FCS questionnaire. The weights below are the WFP VAM 2008 weights and are treated as part of the instrument definition, not a programming decision. |
| Food Consumption Group | 3 | WFP VAM Food Consumption Score Technical Guidance Note (2015) | The food consumption group derived from the Food Consumption Score (FCS) using WFP standard thresholds. Standard thresholds are 21 and 35; in high-sugar or high-oil dietary contexts, WFP recommends adjusted thresholds of 28 and 42. |
| Growth Reference | 5 | WHO Child Growth Standards and Growth Reference | The reference population used to derive z-scores and band classifications from anthropometric measurements. Different references produce different z-scores for the same raw measurement, so the reference must travel with the derived values. |
| Habitability Status | 5 | Sphere Handbook (2018) Shelter and Settlement chapter | A programming-facing judgement of whether a dwelling can currently be occupied, and what category of shelter response it requires. Distinct from damage level: a moderately damaged dwelling may be habitable, and a lightly damaged one may still be unoccupied (e.g., household has displaced). The four-tier substantive scale (habitable, needs minor repairs, needs major repairs, must be demolished) distinguishes between repair-grant and reconstruction-grant tiers, which is a programming decision point in Sphere 2018 shelter recovery; a separate 'unknown / not assessed' code is provided to record absence of assessment. |
| HDDS Food Group | 12 | FAO Guidelines for Measuring Household and Individual Dietary Diversity (i1983e, 2011) | The twelve food groups defined by FAO for the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS). For each group, the household is asked whether any member consumed an item from that group in the past 24 hours; the HDDS is the count of groups consumed (0-12). The twelve-group version is the operational reporting form; FAO's i1983e guidance also defines a sixteen-group composition for richer disaggregation. |
| Household Hunger Scale Category | 4 | FANTA Household Hunger Scale: Indicator Definition and Measurement Guide (2010, revised 2017) | The household hunger category derived from the Household Hunger Scale (HHS) score. Four categories using FANTA standard thresholds. |
| HHS Frequency | 4 | FANTA Household Hunger Scale Indicator Guide (2011) | Four-tier frequency scale used by the FANTA Household Hunger Scale. For each of the three HHS items, the respondent reports how often in the past 30 days the condition occurred. The scoring rule collapses this scale into a 0-2 count (never = 0; rarely/sometimes = 1; often = 2) before summing the three items into an HHS score of 0-6. |
| LCS Band | 4 | WFP CARI Guidelines (3rd edition, 2021) | Four-level severity classification of household livelihood coping, derived from the WFP Livelihood Coping Strategies (LCS) module. The household is assigned the highest severity tier of any strategy it adopted (responded 'yes' or 'already exhausted'). If no strategy was adopted, the household is classified as 'none'. |
| LCS Adoption Frequency | 4 | WFP CARI Guidelines (3rd edition, 2021) | Four-tier frequency response scale used by the WFP Livelihood Coping Strategies module to ask whether, and how often, a household has adopted each strategy in the past 30 days. Under CARI, a household is considered to have adopted a strategy if the response is anything other than 'never'. |
| Livelihood Coping Strategy | 14 | WFP CARI Guidelines (3rd edition, 2021) | An illustrative set of household coping strategies drawn from the WFP Livelihood Coping Strategies (LCS) module, grouped into three severity tiers: stress strategies are reversible and indicate reduced ability to deal with future shocks; crisis strategies directly reduce future productive capacity; emergency strategies are harder to reverse and affect long-term welfare. Under CARI, a household's LCS output is the highest tier reported to have been adopted. WFP VAM expects operations to contextualise the strategy list and tier assignments per country; the codes below should be read as a canonical reference set, not a closed list. |
| Malnutrition Severity | 3 | WHO Child Growth Standards (2006) | The severity of malnutrition based on z-score classifications from the WHO Child Growth Standards, used for stunting (height-for-age), underweight (weight-for-age), and wasting (weight-for-height) assessments. |
| Measurement Type | 2 | WHO Anthropometric Training Course (2008) | How length or height was measured on an anthropometric record. WHO protocols prescribe recumbent length for children under 24 months and standing height from 24 months onward; recording which was used allows downstream consumers to apply the small recumbent-to-standing correction where appropriate. |
| MUAC Band | 3 | WHO/UNICEF/WFP/UNSCN Joint Statement on Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (2007/2009) | The colour-coded MUAC screening band for children aged 6-59 months, derived from mid-upper arm circumference using WHO/UNICEF standard cutoffs. |
| Non-food Item Type | 12 | Sphere Handbook (2018) Shelter and Settlement chapter | Categories of non-food items (NFIs) typically distributed in shelter response operations, aligned with Sphere Handbook 2018 Chapter 4 minimum package. Used as a multi-select value set when recording which essential items a household is currently missing after a shock. |
| rCSI Strategy | 5 | The Coping Strategies Index (Maxwell and Caldwell, 2008) | The five food-related coping behaviours measured by the WFP/CARE Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI). Each strategy is asked as a count of days (0-7) in the past week and multiplied by a severity weight before summing to a composite index. Weights are part of the instrument definition. |
| Reconstruction Intent | 5 | None | The household's stated intent regarding the damaged dwelling: whether they plan to repair, rebuild in place, relocate, or are unable to act without external support. Used by recovery programming to target repair grants, reconstruction grants, and relocation assistance. |
| Service Disruption Type | 9 | None | Essential services that may be disrupted in a post-shock context. Multi-select vocabulary: a record lists every service currently disrupted at the household's dwelling. Codes cover both full interruption (service not functioning at all) and partial interruption such as intermittent supply or unsafe water, so a record can describe present-but-non-functional and present-but-contaminated cases in addition to complete outages. This captures functional status after the shock; the household's usual service infrastructure type is recorded separately by water_source, sanitation_facility, and electricity_access. |
| Shelter Damage Level | 5 | IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) Shelter Damage Assessment | Severity of physical damage to a dwelling observed in a post-shock assessment. The five-tier scale below follows IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) labels and aligns with Sphere Handbook 2018 Chapter 4 damage categories. The Shelter Cluster's four-tier assessment (heavily / moderately / slightly damaged / no damage) maps onto this scale with the destroyed tier folded into heavily damaged; system_mappings records that crosswalk. |
| Shelter Situation Type | 9 | Global Shelter Cluster post-disaster shelter situation categories | The type of shelter arrangement currently occupied by the household, particularly relevant when the original dwelling is damaged or unavailable. Complements dwelling_type (which records the household's usual dwelling) by recording what the household is actually living in at the moment of assessment. |
| Structural Safety Tag | 3 | ATC-20 Post-Earthquake Safety Evaluation of Buildings | Safe-to-occupy tag assigned to a structure by a qualified engineer or trained shelter assessor during a rapid post-disaster assessment, using the green/yellow/red taxonomy codified by ATC-20 and adopted by many national building-safety authorities. This is optional in a humanitarian administration: a household enumerator is not expected to assign a structural safety tag. |
| MDD-W Food Group | 10 | FAO Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) Guide, 2021 | The ten food groups used by the FAO Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) indicator, which replaced the earlier WDDS. A woman of reproductive age is asked, for each group, whether she consumed any food from that group in the past 24 hours. Women consuming at least five of the ten groups are classified as having achieved minimum dietary diversity. |