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Self vs. Proxy Reporting in the 

Consumer Expenditure Survey

Nancy A. Mathiowetz

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Framing the discussion

 Nature of the Survey Instrument Frames the 

Research Questions

 Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey

 Retrospective Recall

 How to minimize response error related to long term recall?

 Consumer Expenditure Diary

 Completion

 How to maximize participation by all members of the CU?

 With analytic unit (CU) in mind
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Note......

We know little with respect to the quality 

of both self and proxy-based reports 

for the CE, so research aimed at 

reducing bias associated with proxybased reports should not ignore the 

onerous task facing the self-reporter. 
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Literature.......

 Moore: little support for the notion that self response 

generally better than quality of proxy reports

 Exception: Turner’s study of crime

 Alwin: Lower reliability for proxy reports

 education, occupation, hours work

 CE Focus

 Intra-Household Communication Study

 Self proxy agreement: 63% of the time

 Self response: more purchases and higher dollar amounts

 JPSM Teen-Parent Study

 24 hour period: 85% agreement rate

 Mean underreporting dollar amount: $6.75
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CEI: Cognitive Processing Perspective

 Knowledge/Encoding

 To what extent does the respondent/recorder have 

knowledge of the expenditure? 

 Retrieval

 To what extent can the respondent/recorder retrieve the 

expenditure?

 Reporting

 To what extent is the respondent/recorder willing to report 

the expenditure?
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Focus on improving proxy reporting......

 Understand under what conditions proxy reports are 

more consistent with self

 Acquisition of the knowledge, richness of the encoded material

 Relationship between self and proxy

 Salient vs. mundane purchases; routine or rare occurrences 

 Focus on question wording to improve retrieval 

strategies

 Episodic vs. Estimation strategies
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..or focus on improving overall quality?

 Expand the use of records

 Usual and expected expenditures

 Utility bills, mortgages/rent

 Receipts 

 Take advantage of longitudinal nature of CEI

 Redesign of information book?

 Inter-interview outreach

 IVR “tagging” periodically throughout the 3 month period

 Incorporate Technology 

 Barcode readers

 Smartphone Applications 
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Diary...

 Multiple respondents per HH

 Grootaert (1986) 

 Impact on personal item expenditures

 Not necessary to get complete participation to be effective

 Arbitron Radio Diary

 BLS field study

 Increase in the number of expenditure items

 Increased dollar value of items

 Lower RR; increased number of trips per complete
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Different problem, similar solution

 Expand the use of records

 Grocery store receipts, restaurant, convenience 

stores

 Incorporate Technology 

 Barcode readers

 Smartphone Applications 
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Solutions demand full understanding of the problem

 CEI: how effective is the bounding interview?

 To what extent do respondents understand that the use of records 

would reduce the burden?

 CEI: what retrieval strategies do respondents use?

 Example: CEI as source of expenditures for gasoline

 CED: what do we know about the communication of the 

diary to others in the CU?

 What reminders exist to help encourage reporting?

 To what extent do interviewers stress the need for full 

participation? 

 CED: are there privacy issues within CU that suppresses 

reporting?
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Cost:Error Tradeoff

 Presumptive Nature of Tradeoff Questions

 Poorer quality data for proxy

 Compared to benchmarks, CE underestimates expenditures. But is 

this a proxy problem? What do we know about CE quality for self 

reports?

 Lower Response Rates

 Nonreponse bias, not rates

 Full participation may not be the key to improvement

 Higher Costs

 Only if implementing the same approach to field operations
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Burden: Redefine the task

 Examine source of expenditure for CPI and 

focus efforts within each instrument

 Reduce Redundancies 

 “all other products, services, and expenses”

 Divide and conquer: focus diary on “personal” 

expenditures/those for which diary provides input for 

the CPI and the CEI on household-level

 CED: Food, personal care products & services, prescription 

and non-prescription drugs, housekeeping supplies, clothing

 Grootaert findings
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Before making changes in the design, consider......

 Conducting a series of ethnographic and/or observational 

studies to gather further information about the response 

process for self and proxy reports. 

 Designing studies so as to assess measurement error for both 

self and proxy reports. 

 Example: partner with Nielson and use their Homescan data as a 

validation source.

 Expanding the 2006 experimental study of the individual 

CED. 

 Reduce redundancies between CU level CED and individual diaries. 

 Include non-response follow-up study to address the tradeoff between 

increased participation and changes in response rates
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With respect to design......

 Redesign CED so as to capture receipts rather than 

requiring recording of information by hand. 

 Reduce the burden by pre-identifying common purchases 

that can be checked off rather than written in by hand. 

 Experimenting with more aggressive requests for 

record keeping that involves all CU members during 

the first CEI interview. 

 Support and encourage record keeping through the use of 

outreach, including but not limited to postcards, IVR, 

email, and incentives. 
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Technology......

 Test the feasibility of incorporating technology in the 

CED

 If technology feasibility study is positive, consider 

altering the design of the CED

 Longer reporting period.

 Tradeoff between reduced costs of enrollment vs. increased length 

of time as a diarist. Examine diary fatigue

 CEI and CED within the same CU

 Experiment with the use of technology for the CEI