THE INTRAHOUSEHOLD COMMUNICATIONS STUDY: 

ESTIMATING THE ACCURACY OF PROXY RESPONSES AT THE DYADIC LEVEL 

Brian A. Kojetin and Leslie A. Miller, Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Brian Kojetin, BLS, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE. Room 4915, Washington, DC. 20212-0001 

KEY WORDS: Proxy Reports, Consumer Expenditures 

Family Communication 

What do people living in the same household know 

about each other? Do they, for example, know the 

employment status, work and vacation hours, and 

wages of other household members? Similarly, do they 

know what other household members spend money on 

and how much they spend? Although there is a 

growing body of literature on what household members 

serving as proxy reporters actually know about other 

household members, and on the factors that might 

account for any observed differences between self and 

proxy reports, the results are rather inconclusive (e.g., 

Moore, 1988). In brief, observed differences between 

self and proxy reports seem to be, at least in part, 

related to factors such as the relationship between the 

proxy and the self, the information being asked about, 

the importance of the information to the proxy, the 

characteristics of the proxy, whether the proxy 

participated in the event, and the method of survey 

administration (see for example Blair, Menon, & 

Bickart, 1990; Cash & Moss, 1974; Groves, 1989; 

Mathiowetz & Groves, 1985; Moore, 1988; Rodgers & 

Herzog; 1987; Rodgers, Herzog, & Andrews, 1988). 

Nevertheless, many surveys continue to accept one 

individual's report about all other household members 

because it is neither reasonable to expect nor practical 

to seek individual reports from each person in every 

household (e.g., Blair, Menon, & B ickart, 1990; 

Dippo, 1989). 

We had two specific goals in this research. Our first 

goal was to examine the accuracy of proxy reports 

involving household members' expenditures. We 

employed survey questions similar to those for which 

the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) frequently accepts 

proxy reports. Our second goal was to identify factors 

that would be systematically related to the accuracy of 

these proxy reports and that could subsequently lead to 

more efficient and effective selection of adequate proxy 

respondents. 

Proxy Accuracy 

Although self-reporters are fallible human beings 

who may forget some of their expenditures or may 

include expenditures made outside of the reference 

period, they are probably the best criteria that can be 

reasonably obtained for studying everyday 

expenditures, and they also represent the best 

alternative to proxy reports for survey researchers. In 

the present investigation we compared proxy reports to 

self reports and utilized their degree of agreement (or 

disagreement) as our criteria for examining potential 

predictors of proxy accuracy. 

Predictors of Proxy Accuracy 

A variety of factors may be related to how much one 

person knows about another household member. There 

are likely to be some individual characteristics that 

distinguish some people, who by virtue of their role or 

status in the household, are likely to be well informed 

about the expenditures of other household members. 

Some people may also have a great deal of knowledge 

about particular household members or may learn 

information about other household members as a result 

of the type or amount of direct or indirect interaction 

they have with other household members. Furthermore, 

some people may know quite a bit about a particular 

household member because of their relationship or their 

interest and involvement in the activities of that 

particular household member. At yet another level of 

analysis, there may also be household or family 

characteristics that distinguish households where all 

members are well-informed about each other from 

households where each person can only be relied upon 

to accurately report about themselves. 

In this paper, we focus on the dyad, looking at the 

direct and indirect interaction of the self and proxy or 

the source or mode by which the proxy learns about 

other household members (through direct participation, 

communication, or observation). We also look at the 

relationship between the proxy and the other 

household members they report on. 

Mode or source of learning. At the most basic 

level, what one person knows about another must be 

learned through some kind of direct or indirect 

interaction. This interaction could be very informative 

and direct, such as participating in the same activity 

together, or discussing a purchase or work schedule. 

For example, Mary may tell John how busy her work 

schedule will be next week, or she may go with him to 

buy groceries. This interaction could also be indirect, 

such as John noticing that Mary is wearing a new 

blazer or that she has come home late from work a 

couple of nights in a row. Of course, one person may 

learn about another by interacting with a third person 

who had a more direct interaction with the second 

person. Julie may, for example, ask her father about 

1095 
her mother's work schedule in order to find out when 

she might be likely to get the car. Or, Julie may find 

out from her sister, Jane, that her parents bought a new 

sofa. People may also learn about other household 

members' expenditures and labor force activities in a 

variety of other ways, such as by seeing bills, receipts, 

or checks. 

Clearly, a person may obtain knowledge about any 

given expenditure made by another household member 

through one or several of these modes. However, some 

of these sources should be better than others for 

fostering more complete information about an 

expenditure. The more information the source 

provides, the more we would expect the proxy might 

know about the expenditure. 

Relationship of the proxy to other household 

members. The amount of information that one 

household member has about another household 

member is also likely to be a function of the kind of 

relationship between the two people. For example, 

parents may choose not to share some information 

about their income or expenditures with their children. 

Likewise, siblings or friends may know more about the 

specific expenditures of teenage household members 

than their parents do. 

The Present Study 

The present study is an examination of data from an 

initial investigation that is part of a larger program of 

research conducted by BLS to examine the factors that 

might influence the accuracy of proxy reports 

particularly regarding labor force status and 

expenditures. The data we present in this paper are 

restricted to dyadic level analyses of expenditures. 

Previous papers have discussed proxy reporting of 

labor force status and family-level analyses of proxy 

reports of expenditures (Miller & Tucker, 1993; Mullin 

& Tonn, 1993; Tucker & Miller, 1993). 

We anticipated that the way in which a proxy 

learned about a target's expenditure would be related to 

their agreement or disagreement with the target. 

Although a person could obtain valid information 

about another's expenditures through a variety of 

means or sources, we believed that some of these 

sources would be more consistently reliable or more 

memorable than others. Specifically, we expected that 

participation with the target, i.e., being with them 

when they made the purchase, would ~be related to less 

self-proxy disagreement. In a similar manner, we 

expected that direct communication from the target to 

the proxy about the expenditure, most likely through a 

conversation, would also be related to less self-proxy 

disagreement to. To a lesser extent, we hypothesized a 

negative relation among first and second hand 

observations and self-proxy disagreement. 

We also anticipated that the nature of the 

relationship between the self and proxy would be 

systematically related to how closely they agreed about 

each others expenditures. Specifically, we 

hypothesized that spouses would show the least amount 

of disagreement when reporting about each other's 

expenditures than any other dyad, i.e., parent-child, 

and child-parent. We also expected parents might 

demonstrate less disagreement with their children's 

expenditures than their children would with their 

parent's expenditures. Although we planned to directly 

compare how much husbands and wives disagreed 

when reporting about each others expenditures, we 

made no predictions regarding the outcome of this 

analysis. 

Method 

Overview of Design 

Seventy-one households completed a computerized 

self-administered questionnaire that included modified 

expenditure questions from four sections of the 

Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey (CEIS) 

covering their expenditures for groceries, food and 

drinks away from home, clothing, and medical 

expenses. Household members were interviewed 

simultaneously on individual computer terminals, 

reporting information for themselves and one or two 

other members of their household. Only household 

members who were at least 16 years old, who would 

have been acceptable as a proxy respondent for the 

CEIS, participated in the study. For each proxy report 

about another household member, respondents 

answered questions concerning how they learned about 

that person's expenditures. 

Measures of Proxy Accuracy 

In conceptualizing and measuring the agreement 

between self and proxy, we considered a variety of 

methods for measuring the level of accuracy between 

self and proxy reports of expenditures. For example, a 

proxy may know that another household member 

shopped for clothing in the past month, but may not 

know how many items they bought or how much they 

spent. By examining several variables with different 

criteria for agreement we could give the proxy 

reporters credit for what they did know, but also 

measure how much they did not know. 

Consequently, we developed three measures of self 

and proxy agreement: 1) whether or not the self and 

proxy agreed that an expenditure took place in each of 

the four categories of expenditures (i.e., clothing, 

groceries, food away from home, medical, and home 

furnishings); 2) how well the self and proxy agreed in 

terms of the number of expenditures (within and across 

the four categories); and 3) how well the self and proxy 

1096 
agreed in terms of the cost of the expenditures, (within 

and across the four categories). 

Creation of Disagreement Indices. For each of the 

indicators of self-proxy agreement that we just 

described, i.e., the categorical level, number of 

expenditures and cost of expenditures, we created an 

index of disagreement by taking the absolute value of 

the difference between the report of the proxy and the 

self for each category and then summing across 

expenditure categories. We then divided the total of 

these differences by the respective total reported by the 

self to scale the discrepancies in terms of their relative 

proportion of the self report. This scaling was 

employed to make the self-proxy disagreement also 

reflect the variability in number and cost of 

expenditures reported by different targets. For 

example, a proxy who missed one of the ten 

expenditures reported by the self would show much 

less disagreement (. 10) than a proxy who missed one of 

two expenditures reported by the self (.5) with this 

scaling. These two proxies would have been treated 

exactly the same without the rescaling because in each 

case only one expenditure was missed. 

Measures of Source or Mode of Learning 

We measured the source of information for different 

categories of expenditures from the proxy's point of 

view by asking them how they learned about the 

expenditures made by another household member 

within different categories of expenditures. For each 

expenditure category (with the exception of food and 

drinks) proxies were presented with a list of possible 

ways they could have learned about the target person's 

expenditure, and they were to select as many of them 

as applied. We grouped the list of items into four sets 

that reflected participation with the target, 

conversation with the target, first hand observations of 

the expenditure, such as noticing a new outfit, and 

f'mally second hand observations which included 

heating about the expenditure from others. 

Unfortunately, if the proxy reporters did not believe or 

did not report that the target person made an 

expenditure in a category during the past week (or 

month for clothing and medical expenditures), they 

may not have provided their typical information source 

for those kinds of expenditures. Thus, our measures of 

source or mode of learning may be limited in this 

study. 

Measures of Relationships 

In this study the only information collected about 

the nature of relationships among household members 

was the type of relationship, for example, spousal, 

parent-child, and child-parent. An inadequate number 

of unrelated individuals and other kinds of relatives 

precluded us from exploring additional relationship 

types. 

Results 

Overview of Data Analyses 

The results of our research are presented in three 

sections. In the first section, we examine three kinds 

of self and proxy agreement on the four different 

categories of expenditures, and from these, we create 

three indices that reflect the amount of disagreement 

between the self and proxy reports. The second and 

third sections show whether the mode of learning, and 

the type of relationship between the self and proxy are 

related to each of these three disagreement indices. 

Self-Proxy Agreement 

Table 1 shows the percentage of cases where the 

self and proxy agreed that an expenditure had or had 

not been made within each expenditure category. The 

last row shows the average agreement across all four 

categories. As shown, the highest agreement was in 

the grocery category, where self and proxy agreed 

almost 80% of the time that groceries had or had not 

been purchased in the last week. The lowest 

agreement was in the food and drinks away from home 

category, where self and proxy agreed about half of the 

time that food and drinks had or had not been 

purchased away from home in the last week. The 

overall average agreement was 62.5% using this 

minimal criteria for a match. 

Table 1. Self and Proxy Agreement on 

Expenditures in a Category. 

Proxy Proxy 

Agreement Misses Overreports 

Clothing 65.80% 44.20% 12.10% 

Food & Drink 49.40% 52.60% 12.30% 

Groceries 79.70% 18.00% 11.70% 

Medical 55.10% 54.00% 27.00% 

Average 62.50% 42.20% 15.76% 

For this measure, we also determined the 

percentages of mismatches according to whether the 

self or proxy omitted an expenditure report when the 

other person reported an expenditure or category. As 

can be seen in column three of Table 1, an average of 

42% of the categories in which expenditures were 

reported by the self were missed by the proxy reporters. 

On the other hand, the self failed to report an 

expenditure at an average of almost 16% of the 

different categories for which proxy reporters reported 

an expenditure, as shown in the last column of Table 1. 

1097 
A closer examination of the total number of 

expenditures reported in each category indicated that 

self and proxy reporters differed significantly in the 

number of expenditures within each category that they 

reported, as can be seen in Table 2. The mean number 

of expenditures for the self exceeded that of the proxy 

for the three categories of clothing, food and drinks, 

and medical, as well as overall, E's (1,157) = 28.23 - 

92.13, all 12's < .01. The difference between self and 

proxy reports for the number of grocery store trips was 

not significant, F (1.157) = 2.01,12 > .10. 

Table 2. Mean Number and Cost of Expenditures 

Reported by Self and Proxy Reporters. 

Self Proxy 

Number of Expenditures 

Clothing 1.39 a .65 b 

Food & Drink 3.29 a 1.43 b 

Groceries .70 a .65 a 

Medical 2.18 a .90 b 

Total 8.20 a 4.02 b 

Cost of Expenditures 

Clothing $59.04 a $24.44 b 

Food & Drink $22.16 a $8.0 lb 

Groceries $44.54a $23.43 b 

Medical $251.15a $81.16 b 

Total $376.89 a $137.04 b 

........ 

Note: Means with different subscripts are significantly 

different at 12 < .05. 

It is possible for the self and the proxy to disagree 

markedly within dyads and still show agreement across 

dyads in the relative number of expenditures. Indeed, 

this appeared to be the case with the number of 

expenditures reported by self and proxy reporters 

correlating significantly for clothing, groceries, and 

medical expenses, r's = .26 to .54,12's < .01. There was 

no significant correlation between self and proxy 

reports of number of expenditures for food and drinks 

purchased away from home or overall across these four 

categories of expenditures, r's = .06 and .09, 

respectively, l/'s > .10. This lack of an overall 

correlation appears to be due chiefly to the relatively 

large number of food and drink purchases reported by 

he self that were often missed by many proxy reporters. 

An examination of how well the self and proxy 

agreed in terms of the cost of the expenditures 

indicated that the cost reported for expenditures within 

and across categories of expenditures differed 

significantly between the self and proxy reporters. 

Table 2 above also shows the total cost of all the 

expenditures within a category and overall as reported 

by both the self and proxy. Specifically, self reporters 

described spending more money than proxy reporters 

for Clothing, Food and Drinks, Groceries, Medical 

Expenses, and overall, _F's (1,157) = 5.09 - 56.77, all 

12's < .05. 

Once again, despite these significant within-dyad 

differences, there was significant agreement across 

dyads in the relative cost of expenditures for clothing 

and groceries, r's = .43 and .41, reslx~tively, 12's < .01, 

but there were no significant relations between the self 

and proxy reports for the cost of food and drinks away 

from home or medical expenditures, r's = .12 and -.02, 

respectively, 12's > .10. As clearly shown in Table 2, 

the cost of medical expenditures dominates the others. 

There were several outliers with very large medical 

expenses that considerably distort this average. The 

median medical expenditures were only $151.00 and 

$53.00 for self and proxy reporters, respectively. 

Because several people who reported rather extreme 

medical expenditures, some of whom it seems likely 

may have accidentally misreported these expenditures, 

we restricted further analyses concerning the cost of 

expenditures to Clothing, Food & Drinks, and 

Groceries categories. The overall correlation between 

self and proxy reporters excluding medical 

expenditures was significant, r = .39, I2 < .01. 

Source or Mode of Learning 

To examine the relation of source or mode of 

learning with self-proxy disagreement, we calculated 

Pearson product-moment correlations among the three 

disagreement indices and the four different sources. 

As can be seen in Table 3, there were some significant 

relations demonstrated between mode of learning and 

self-proxy agreement, although they were not exactly 

in line with our expectations. Specifically, more first 

and second hand observations were associated with 

lower levels of disagreement between the self and the 

proxy reporter on the category of expenditures, r's = 

-.23 and-.22, respectively, 12's < .01. The relations 

among participation and conversations with self-proxy 

disagreement for the category of expenditures were 

marginally significant, r's = -.16 and -.14, respectively, 

12's < .10. Conversations were also significantly related 

to lower levels of self-proxy disagreement in the total 

cost of expenditures, r = -.18, 12 < .05. There were no 

other significant associations among source of proxy 

1098 
information and self-proxy disagreement, r's = -.05 to 

-.14, all 12's > .10. 

Table 3. Sources of Proxy Information and SelfProxy Disagreement 

Type of Disagreement 

Source of Proxy Category of Number of Cost of 

Information 

Participation 

Conversation 

First Hand 

Observation 

Second Hand 

Observation 

Expenditure Expenditures Expenditure 

-.16+ -.11 -.08 

-.14+ -.13 -.18" 

-.23** -.11 -.14 

-.22** -. 11 -.05 

+ 12<.10 * 12<.05 ** 12<.01 

Relationship Between Self and Proxy 

To examine the differences between self and proxy 

reporters in different relationships, we conducted 

analyses of variance of the serf-proxy disagreement 

indices of categories of expenditures, number of 

expenditures, and cost of expenditures by the type of 

relationship between the self and proxy with follow-up 

tests using Tukey's HSD procedure. As illustrated in 

Table 4, there were some significant differences in selfproxy disagreement for different types of relationships 

for the total number of expenditures reported and the 

category of expenditures with some of the differences 

coinciding with our expectations. Specifically, parents 

reporting as proxies for their children's expenditures 

had significantly greater disagreement about the 

number expenditures and category of expenditures than 

husbands made reporting about their wives, wives 

reporting about husbands, or than children reporting 

about their parents. However, there were no other 

significant differences between these relationship 

types. There were no relationship type differences for 

disagreement on the cost of expenditures. 

Conclusions 

In the present study, we examined the agreement of 

self and proxy reports about common expenditures, and 

we explored some dyadic influences on their 

agreement. In general, the self and proxy agreed that 

an expenditure had occurred within a specific category 

from 40 to 80 percent of the time, but proxy reporters 

missed over 40% of the different categories in which 

the self reported expenditures. Further, proxy reports 

were significantly lower than the self reports in total 

number of expenditures and in the total cost of the 

expenditures. Despite the significant differences 

within dyads, the proxy reports were still related to the 

self reports across dyads for number and cost of 

expenditures in several categories of expenditures. 

Thus, although the proxy reporters in this study were 

likely to underreport the expenditures when compared 

to the self, there was still significant relative agreement 

between the self and proxy reports. It is important to 

note here that we have no objective data as to what 

really occurred, but we believe that it is safe to assume 

that there are errors in reporting by both self and 

proxy, and that neither are infallible. 

Table 4. Relationship Type and Disagreement 

about Expenditures. 

Type of Disagreement 

Relationship Category of Number of Cost of 

Type Expenditure Expenditures Expenditure 

Husband 0.533 a 0.795 a 0.799 

Wife 0.547 a 0.818 a 0.866 

Child-Parent 0.404 a 0.732 a 0.823 

Parent-Child 0.934 b 1.301b 1.04 

Note: Means with different subscripts are significantly 

different at 12 < .05. 

Using three indices that reflected the discrepancies 

between self and proxy reports, we were able to 

account for some of the variability in self-proxy 

disagreement by taking into account the mode of 

learning and the type of relationship between the self 

and proxy. Specifically, all four modes of learning 

were associated with lower levels of disagreement 

between the self and the proxy reporter for the category 

of expenditure. Conversation was also related to less 

disagreement about the total cost of expenditures. 

These results were not as strong as we had hoped. In 

addition, the modes of learning that we had considered 

to be the weakest (observations) performed adequately, 

while participation, which we had considered the 

strongest mode of learning, was only marginally 

significant in predicting one kind of disagreement. It 

is worth noting that the rates for conversation and 

participation in the present study were very high which 

may have contributed to a ceiling effect on the 

observed correlations. 

1099 
In our analyses of relationship type, parents proved 

to be relatively quite inferior reporters about the 

category and about the total number of expenditures 

made by their children. Parents demonstrated 

significantly greater disagreement than children 

reporting about them, or husbands and wives reporting 

about each other. These results differed slightly when 

we did not rescale the disagreement indices by the 

number of categories and expenditures, which reflects 

the fact that children were making fewer expenditures 

and parents were missing a small number of them, but 

a relatively large percentage. 

In conclusion, accurate proxy reporting can be 

quite difficult to obtain for consumer expenditures. In 

this research, we have begun to identify some of the 

factors that are related to how well proxy and self 

reports agree about expenditures. In the near future, 

we hope to learn more about the factors that mediate 

self-proxy convergence so that we can gain a greater 

understanding of proxy reporting and so that we can 

develop respondent rules that will improve the quality 

of proxy data. 

References 

Bickart, B.A., Blair, J., Menon, G., & Sudman, S. 

(1990). Cognitive aspects of proxy reporting of 

behavior. In M. Goldberg, G. Gore, & R. Pollay 

(Eds.) Advances in Consumer Research, vol 17, pp 

198-206. Provo, UT: Assoc. for Consumer Research. 

Cash, W.S. & Moss, A.J. (1972). Optimum recall 

period for reporting persons injured in motor vehicle 

accidents. Vital and Health Statistics~ National 

Center for Health Statistics, Series 2, No. 50 

Dippo, C.S. (1989). The use of cognitive laboratory 

techniques for investigating memory retrieval errors 

in retrospective surveys. Proceedings of the 

International Statistical Institute. Paris, France. 

Groves, R.M. (1989). Survey Errors and Survey Costs. 

New York: Wiley. 

Kuiper, N.A., & Rogers, T.B., (1979). Encoding or 

personal information: Self-other differences. 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 

499-514. 

Mathiowetz, N.A. & Groves, R. M. (1985). The effects 

of respondent rules on health survey reports. 

American Journal of Public Health, 75, pp. 639-633. 

Miller, L., & Tucker, C., (1993, January). The 

Intrahousehold Communications Study: A typology 

of family Cohesion. Paper presented at the 1993 

winter meetings of the American Statistical 

Association, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. 

Mullin, P. A. & Tonn, B.E. (1993, January). Factors 

associated with proxy knowledge of employmentrelated information. Paper presented at the 1993 

winter meetings of the American Statistical 

Association, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. 

Moore, J.C., (1988). Self-proxy response status and 

survey response quality: A review of literature. 

Journal of Official Statistics, 4(2), pp. 155-172. 

Rodgers, W.L., & Herzog, R. (1987). Interviewing 

older adults: The accuracy of factual information. 

Journal of Gerontology, 42, (4). pp. 387-394. 

Rodgers, W.L., Hel'zog, R., & Andrews, F. M. (1988). 

Interviewing older adults: Validity of self-reports of 

satisfaction. Psychology and Aging, 3(3). pp. 264- 

272. 

Tucker, C. & Miller, L. A. (1993, January). The 

Intrahousehold Communications Study: Family 

Cohesion and the level of knowledge about 

expenses. Paper presented at the 1993 winter 

meetings of the American Statistical Association, Ft. 

Lauderdale, FL 

1100