THE INTRAHOUSEHOLD COMMUNICATIONS STUDY: 

FAMILY COHESION AND THE LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT EXPENSES 

Clyde Tucker and Leslie Miller, Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Clyde Tucker, BLS, 2 Massachusetts Ave., N.E. Rm 4915, Washington, DC. 20212 

KEY WORDS:Proxy reporting, consumer 

expenditures 

Government surveys often accept reports 

from proxy respondents. For example, the Current 

Population Survey (CPS), used to measure 

unemployment, uses proxy information about the 

employment status of other household members. 

The Consumer Expenditure Program, which 

provides the cost weights in the Consumer Price 

Index, accepts proxy reports about the expenditures 

of other family members. Because many 

govemment surveys rely on proxy reporting, the 

accuracy of important estimates from Federal 

surveys often depend on how much information 

family members communicate to one another. 

Recent work by Tanur (1990) on the problems of 

proxy reporting in the Current Population Survey 

(CPS), particularly with respect to the activities of 

young adults, has led to an interest at the Bureau of 

Labor Statistics (BLS) in the pattems of 

communications within families. 

It is neither reasonable to expect nor 

practical to seek individual reports from each 

family member in every household. Some members 

cannot be contacted, others would refuse, and all of 

these individual reports would require a much 

greater expenditure of resources, especially 

interviewer time. Instead, it might be wise to find 

some method for estimating the accuracy of proxy 

responses from specific households. Interviews 

with every family member would only be attempted 

in those households with a very low probability of 

act~urate proxy knowledge. Even if this 

information were not used to screen families, it 

would provide a means of evaluating the quality of 

survey estimates. 

In order to explore the possibility of 

collecting such information, BLS contracted with 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to 

conduct an experimental study of the level of proxy 

knowledge and the communication pattems within 

selected households conceming the employment 

history and expenditures of individual members. 

The project is called the Intrahousehold 

Communications Study (IHCS). Miller and Tucker 

(1993) developed a typology of family cohesion 

using data from the IHCS, and examined the 

relationships between cohesion and family 

characteristics. This paper uses the typology of 

cohesion, as well as information about the family 

characteristics, to better understand the causal 

process leading to proxy knowledge about 

expenditures. No attempt will be made to explain 

the creation of the cohesion measure. For a 

detailed account of the creation of the cohesion 

measure refer to Miller and Tucker (1993). 

Factors Affecting Proxy Knowledge 

There has been a great deal of research on 

the subject of proxy knowledge. While the results 

are somewhat inconsistent, much of the results can 

be summarized by the following statement from 

Groves (1989) about the importance of the social 

situation: 

The two-category model of respondent rule 

effects (self versus proxy) is clearly a 

naive one. From the perspective of a 

potential proxy reporter, both the 

likelihood of exposure to knowledge about 

an event and perceived importance of the 

event should be a function of social 

relationships with the sample person. (pp. 

417-417, italics his) 

For example, see Cannell et al. (1965), Bower and 

Gilligan (1977), Moore (1988), Blair, Menon, and 

Bickart (1991), and O'Muircheartaigh (1991). 

The topic of the information also affects 

proxy knowledge. Not only does this refer to the 

specific content (Cash and Moss 1974; 

Mathiowetz and Groves 1985; and Moore 1988), 

942 
but also to the importance of the information to the 

proxy (Kuiper and Rogers 1979; Petty and 

Cacioppo 1982; Blair, Menon, and Bickart 1991). 

In addition, if a proxy respondent has participated 

in an event, he or she is more likely to recall it 

(Tulving 1972 and 1983; Kuiper and Rogers 

1979; Bickart et al. 1990; and Blair, Menon, and 

Bickart 1991). 

Given this research, we believe it likely 

that family cohesion, and its components, should be 

related to the level of proxy knowledge about 

expenditures. In particular, we expect that the 

connected families will show the greatest amount of 

proxy knowledge because all members will have a 

uniformly high level of interaction with one 

another. Members of disengaged families, on the 

other hand, interact very little, so these families will 

display the lowest level of proxy knowledge. 

Individuals in enmeshed families interact with one 

another a great deal , but the nature of these 

interactions may be such that information is not 

exchanged equally in both directions. Reciprocity 

is likely in the case of separated families, but the 

actual level of exchange is likely to vary from one 

dyad to another. Therefore, we expect enmeshed 

and separated families to have moderate levels of 

proxy knowledge. These hypotheses assume that 

all individuals possess the same ability to retrieve 

and, thus, pass on to other family members 

information about their expenditures. 

Method 

A total of sixty-nine households and 166 

people participated in the study. Households 

including at least two members 16 years of age or 

older were recruited from the Knoxville, Tennessee 

metropolitan area. Sixty of the sixty-nine families 

were included in our analyses. Seven of the 

households were deleted because they had no 

related individuals, and, thus, were not considered 

families for our purposes. Two households were 

deleted because the amount of missing data made 

the creation of important measures impossible. A 

discussion of the characteristics of these families is 

contained in Miller & Tucker (1993). A computer 

assisted personal interview survey was developed 

consisting of eight modules of questions. An 

experimenter worked with each household to 

answer the first module of questions consisting of 

household level questions. After completing the 

household set-up questions, subjects then began 

their individual sessions at separate terminals. 

Two to five members of a household were 

interviewed simultaneously on individual computer 

terminals. Each household member reported 

individual demographic information (module 2) and 

reported employment and expenditure information 

for themselves and one or two other members of 

their household (modules 3,4,6, and 7). For each 

proxy report about another household member, 

respondents answered communications questions 

conceming how they leamed about that person's 

employment (module 5) or expenditures (module 

8). A more detailed description of the experiment 

is provided in Miller and Tucker (1993). 

Measurement of Family Cohesion 

Although both dyadic and family level 

summary measures were created, only family level 

measures are discussed in this paper. At the family 

level, three dependent summary measures were 

developed to classify our families with respect to 

cohesion. The creation of these measures is 

discussed in Miller & Tucker (1993), but they 

captured the character of the family's social, 

emotional, and material interactions. Each of the 

sixty households was classified as 1) enmeshed, 2) 

connected, 3) separated, or 4) disengaged based on 

the substance of these interactions measured by the 

three indicators" 1) the nature of the 

fqmmunk;alion between family members, 2) the 

degree of independence of family members, and 3) 

the strength of the bonds between family members. 

Again, other details of this assignment are in Miller 

and Tucker ( 1993). 

Measurement of Self and Proxy Knowledge 

At the family level, 10 performance 

measures were developed. Four of the measures 

reflected self reported information. Four of the 

measures reflected the match between self and 

proxy. The other two reflected the average number 

of expenditures per person and the average number 

of reported proxy expenditures. The measurement 

of these variables is summarized below. 

Respondents were asked to report 

expenditure information about themselves and to 

provide proxy information for up to two other 

943 
household members for the following expenditure 

categories" clothing, entertainment, groceries, home 

fumishings, food away from home, non-business 

trips, and several categories of medical 

expenditures. In most cases, respondents were 

asked what the expenditure was, where they made 

the expenditure, and the cost of the expenditure. In 

some cases, respondents were asked other 

information such as the day the expenditure was 

made and the time of day. 

All self reported expenditures were given 

four scores: a what score, a where score, a cost 

score, and a total score. These scores reflected 1) 

the level of specificity of the reported expenditure, 

2) the level of specificity of the reported place that 

the expenditure was made, 3) the level of 

specificity of the reported cost of the expenditure, 

and 4) a total average score (see appendix 1 for 

guidelines for coding self expenditures). All scores 

ranged from 0 to 10. For example, when coding a 

reported expenditure, if a person reported that they 

had purchased a coke, that expenditure was scored 

as a 10. If a person reported that they had 

purchased junk food, that expenditure was scored 

as a 5. If the person reported that they did not 

know what the item was, but there was an 

expenditure, it was scored as a 0. When coding the 

cost, if a person reported an exact value, the cost 

was scored as a 10. If a person reported an 

estimate or range, the cost was scored as a 5. If the 

person reported that they did not know the cost or 

the cost was blank, the cost was scored as a 0. 

Proxy reported expenditures were then 

matched with self reported expenditures and were 

scored according to the adequacy of the match. All 

matching scores ranged from 0 to 10. Each 

person's self reported expenditures were listed by 

the category of the expenditure followed by each 

proxy report within each of these expenditure 

categories. Upon viewing the self and proxy 

reports for a specific person, coders were instructed 

to code a match if there was even the slightest 

indication that two reports matched. For example, 

if Donna reported purchasing jewelry and Tom 

reported Donna purchasing a gown and stockings, 

there is obviously no match. However, if Donna 

reported purchasing a soda and Tom reported 

Donna purchasing junk food, if the day and time of 

the purchase were consistent, we assumed a match. 

It is important to note that it was possible 

that two self reported expenditures could match one 

proxy report or two proxy reports could be coded 

as matching one self expenditure. For example, if 

Donna reported purchasing stockings and also 

reported purchasing shoes, Donna's two reports 

might be matched with Tom's proxy report that 

Donna purchased stocking and shoes. 

Once a match was made, the adequacy of 

the match was scored. The self reported 

expenditure (the what), the place the expenditure 

was made (the where), and the cost of the 

expenditure (the cos0 was compared to the proxy 

reported information (see appendix 2 for a 

complete description of the matching guidelines). 

For example, for the what, if a specific item in both 

the self and the proxy were the same (e.g, coke and 

coke -- Pepsi and coke) then the what was scored 

as a 10. If there was a specific and a genetic item 

(e.g., coke and junk food, jewelry and a ring), then 

the what was scored as a 7. If there was a genetic 

and a genetic item (apparel and apparel), then the 

what was scored as a 5. If there was an unsure 

case of a specific and a genetic (e.g., milk and 

muffin vs pumpkin bread), then the what was 

scored as a 3. If there was a what reported in one 

but not in the other, or if the self and proxy were 

totally different, the what was scored as a 0. The 

where and cost were scored in a similar fashion. 

After all matches were scored, the what, 

where, and cost scores of the proxy and self were 

summed separately across households, subjects, 

and category to creme a family level file. Each of 

the self expenditure scores were then divided by the 

number of expenditures used to create those scores 

to give three total average self scores. The three 

average self scores were added together to creme a 

final average self score. Each of the proxy 

expenditure scores was divided by the number of 

proxy reports to give three total average proxy 

scores. The three proxy scores were added to 

create a final average proxy score. The total 

number of expenditures was divided by the number 

of persons reporting in each household to give the 

average number of items reported by person. 

Results 

The analysis was restricted to bivariate 

relationships given the relatively small number of 

944 
families. Thus, the effects of each of the 

independent variables cannot be isolated, and this 

confounding must be kept in mind when 

interpreting the findings. Because of the small 

number of units and the fact that they are not 

representative, a significance level of .90 or greater 

is used only to indicate the most promising 

associations. 

Table 1 contains the means for the four 

summary performance measures, overall, the 

connected families perform better than the others. 

The separated and disengaged ones perform the 

poorest. Enmeshed families have the lowest scores 

for proxy knowledge, but this may be the result of 

the large number of self-reported expenditures. Of 

greatest interest, perhaps, are the findings 

concerning the communication (social) component 

of cohesion. Not only do those families with a high 

level of communication have relatively better proxy 

knowledge, but they also have the best self reports. 

Notice that the families with the least 

communication have the worst self reports, too. 

The results for the measures of bonds and 

independence largely coincide with the findings 

about the enmeshed families, as might be expected. 

It should not be surprising that good self 

reports are related to good proxy reports, and this 

may be the case in connected families. But the self 

reports can also appear to have the opposite effect, 

as in enmeshed families. This makes it difficult to 

interpret the results. An attempt was made to 

control for the independent effect of good self 

reports, but the number of cases was too small and 

the relationships too strong to leave much room for 

analysis. The average proxy score has about a .4 

correlation with both the average score for selfreported expenditures and the average number of 

self-reported expenditures, but the first is positive 

while the second is negative. Even so, the two selfreport measures are positively correlated. 

What can be said is that cohesion, and its 

components, may have as much to do with good 

self reports as good proxy reports. Either the 

information is not transmitted to other family 

members at the same rate in different types of 

families, or there may be a point at which more 

information cannot be absorbed. Encouraging is 

the fact that families with high communication have 

not only the greatest number of self-reported 

expenditures but also the best proxy knowledge of 

those expenditures. 

Table 2 shows the means for the 

performance measures for the various demographic 

subgroups. Most of the relationships are very 

Table 1. 

Means of perforrrlance Measul'es by Lev¢l[s of Cohesion Indicators 

Familv 

Enmeshed 

Connected 

Separated 

Disengaged 

Communication 

High 

Moderate 

Low 

Bonds 

Strong 

Moderate 

Weak 

Indeoendence 

_ 

Very indep. 

Somewhat indep. 

Dependent 

Sum Match Sum 

Self Total Proxy 

P<.2787 P<.2554 P<.2661 P<.3311 

25.50 .3824 7.503 6.901 

24.33 .5390 11.20 5.219 

21.45 .4138 8.099 4.850 

23.14 .4041 9.547 4.041 

P<.0209 P<. 3817 P<.6538 P<.0259 

25.77 .4860 10.27 7.809 

24.49 .5014 7.979 5.401 

19.61 .3576 10.17 3.375 

P<.0137 P<.3062 P<.5956 P<. 1132 

18.43 .4500 9.981 7.111 

24.57 .5097 10.22 5.057 

24.73 .3360 7.421 4.500 

P<.9588 P<.0693 P<.0740 P<.4518 

23.82 .2787 9.331 4.803 

23.94 .5237 10.84 5.349 

24.49 .4435 5.119 6.750 

weak. Large families, which are most likely to 

enmeshed, do tend to have less proxy knowledge, 

but they also have more reported expenditures. 

Interestingly enough, families with the least 

education have the greatest proxy knowledge. 

Conclusions 

The hypothesized relationship between 

cohesion and proxy knowledge received some 

support, but cohesion is clearly confounded with 

the quality of the self report. In fact, cohesion, 

and/or its components, may be more related to 

motivation, or quality of the survey response in 

general, than to proxy knowledge in particular. It 

could be that people who are willing to take the 

time to give complete reports about themselves do 

945 
Table 2. 

Means of Performance Measures by Demoaraohic Sub~rouos 

Average 

Sum 

Self 

Match 

Average 

Sum 

Proxy 

Average 

Exoenditure 

Family Type 

Youngest less than 13 

Youngest between 13 and 17 

Youngest older than 17 or no 

children 

Family Size 

Two persons 

Three or four persons 

Five or more persons 

Family Education 

P<.9713 

23.77 

24.35 

24.01 

P<.7841 

24.44 

23.48 

23.90 

P<.3308 

P<.4746 

.4476 

.3787 

.5087 

P<.2014 

.5096 

.4909 

.2959 

P<.4548 

P<.5146 

9.816 

7.161 

10.34 

P<.0993 

10.78 

10.08 

4.81 

P<.0624 

P<.8766 

5.288 

6.055 

5.361 

P<.2164 

5.011 

5.366 

7.541 

P<.9945 

High school, technical school, or less 

Some college or 2 year degree 

College del~ree or more 

Family Age 

Less than 30 

Between 30 and 50 

Greater than 50 

Family Income 

Less than $15,000 

Between $15,000 and $29,999 

Between $30,000 and $44,000 

Greater than $45,000 

25.56 

23.21 

23.61 

P<.2848 

23.44 

25.42 

23.23 

P<.0661 

20.47 

23.00 

25.16 

25.14 

.5454 

.4337 

.4798 

P<.9368 

.4916 

.4676 

.4968 

P<.8910 

.4317 

.4981 

.5065 

.4604 

12.82 

8.056 

9.611 

P<.5648 

11.01 

9.784 

8.740 

P<.3824 

7.967 

11.69 

10.71 

8.532 

5.348 

5.409 

5.462 

P<.2856 

4.613 

5.757 

6.250 

P<.6682 

5.296 

4.461 

5.742 

5.794 

the same when reporting for other family members, 

and vice versa. 

The re do not appear to be strong 

relationships between most family characteristics 

and the performance measures. Family size may be 

the most important, which suggest the 

consideration of other variables measuring the 

family's physical circumstances. As pointed out in 

Miller and Tucker (1993) other, less easily 

measured family characteristics also may be at 

work. When the dyadic analysis is undertaken, we 

will also be examining the particular relationships 

in the family and how they affect proxy knowledge. 

This research has been exploratory in 

nature. In our next study, we want to develop a 

better measure of emotional bonds. We also need 

to select families more carefully and have a larger 

number of them in order to overcome some of the 

confounding we experienced this time. 

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(Ed.). Measurement Errgrs in Surveys (pp 

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Remembering information related to one's self

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We extend great thanks to Sharon Krieger, 

Stephanie Henderson, Lesa Deleonibus, and 

Ron DeCarlo for doing such a comprehensive 

coding job. 

947