This cross-sectional study involved 383 undergraduate students from health-related courses at the International Islamic UniversityMalaysia Kuantan campus. The participants were selected by convenience sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a self-administered questionnaire consisting of three parts socio-demographic background, food insecurity, and coping strategies. The data were analysed as descriptive and inferential analyses, such as Chi-Square, Mann-Whitney, and Kruskal-Wallis.
Results:
It was found that 21.41% of the participants reported experiencing food insecurity. There were significant associations between parents’ income (p<0.001), financial status (p<0.001), academic performance (p = 0.04) and working part-time (p = 0.01) with food insecurity. It was also discovered that there were significant associations between working part-time (p<0.001), faculty of study (p<0.001), academic year (p<0.001), financial status (p<0.001), academic cumulative grade point average (CGPA) (p<0.001) and monthly expenses (p = 0.01) with Malaysian Coping Strategies Instruments (MCSI) score. A significant association between food insecurity and MCSI score (p<0.001) was also found in this study.