FoodAPS National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey

USDA's National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) is the first nationally representative survey of U.S. households to collect unique and comprehensive data about household food purchases and acquisitions. Detailed information was collected about foods purchased or otherwise acquired for consumption at home and away from home, including foods acquired through food and nutrition assistance programs. The survey includes nationally representative data from 4,826 households, including Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) households, low-income households not participating in SNAP, and higher income households. For a more detailed description of the survey, see Background.

The USDA, Economic Research Service and the University of Maryland, College Park are pleased to host the "International Food Acquisition Research and Methods" (iFARM) workshop on October 20-21, 2022 (rescheduled from April 2022 in order to accommodate an in-person event), at the University of Maryland. The goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss advancements in methods for collecting and processing food acquisition data. More information on the workshop can be found on the University of Maryland’s Social Data Science Center’s iFARM webpage. 

Public-use FoodAPS data are available for download in three file formats: SAS, STATA, and CSV. If the public-use files are not sufficient for the researchers' needs, see the Data Access page for instructions about how to gain access to restricted-use data.

The public-use files include: The household-level and individual-level interview files, the food-at-home (FAH) and food-away-from-home (FAFH) event files, the FAH and FAFH item files, data from the Meals and Snacks form, household access to FAFH outlets, and SNAP-authorized FAH retailers. All codebooks and a User's Guide, providing an overview of the survey and data sets as well as general notes about using the data, are also available (see Documentation below).