Rates of and characteristics associated with food insecurity differ among undergraduate and graduate students at a large public university in the Southeast United States

The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of food insecurity and identify characteristics associated with food security status separately for undergraduate and graduate students. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 4819 students from a public flagship university in the Southeastern US. Students completed an online questionnaire assessing food security status over the past 12 months using the 10-item US Adult Food Security Survey Module and self-reported demographics and student characteristics. Data were collected in October and November of 2016. Analyses were stratified by student status (undergraduate or graduate). We calculated frequencies of food security status categories and used multinomial logistic regression to assess the association between food security status and student characteristics. Food insecurity rates were 25.2% for undergraduate and 17.8% for graduate students. Characteristics associated with food security status (p < .05) for undergraduates only were gender, year in school, receipt of financial aid, cooking frequency, perceived cooking skills, and having a meal plan. For graduate students only, characteristics included age, marital status, having dependent children, enrollment status, and body mass index. Characteristics associated with food security status across both groups included race/ethnicity, perceived health, international student, and employment status. While most prior studies of college food insecurity look only at undergraduate students or combine undergraduate and graduate students into one group, we found differences between undergraduate and graduate students. It is important to consider undergraduate and graduate students as two separate groups as strategies that would be most effective for addressing food insecurity may differ between them.