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Proxy Reporting in the 

Consumer Expenditure Surveys Program 

1. Background Statement 

Proxy reports are survey responses provided by a respondent about another member of 

the sampled unit or household. Proxy reports are used in surveys as an alternative to 

interviewing all individual sampled unit members, when attempting to obtain individual reports 

is neither reasonable nor practical (Miller and Tucker 1993). Proxy reporting can also be used 

when a target respondent isn’t available or is incapable of participating. For many household 

surveys, such as the CEQ or CED, the difficulty and expense of obtaining information firsthand 

from all sampled household members is simply prohibitive. Instead, proxy reporting is used to 

collect information about all household members from a single respondent (Kojetin and Jerstad 

1997). 

Although a common methodological assumption is that the best method of collecting 

information about a target individual is from that individual directly (Mathiowetz and Groves 

1985), a review of the literature on proxy reporting found little evidence that self-reports were 

inherently superior to data provided by a proxy (Moore 1988). However, this finding should be 

qualified by Moore’s caveat that well designed studies of the self/proxy issue are rare, and the 

range of topics covered has been limited. 

When differences between self and proxy reports have been observed, they seem in 

varying degree related to the relationship between proxy and self, the type of 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 (Bickart et 

al. 1990, Kojetin and Miller 1993, Lee et al. 2004, Mathiowetz and Groves 1985, and Moore 

1988). 

Currently the CE program uses proxy reporting in both the CEQ and CED surveys. 

Typically only one person responds to the survey, answering questions about the entire 

household. The accuracy of the data provided depends on the extent to which the proxy 

respondent has detailed knowledge about the expenditures of all household members. Given the 

complexity of many household situations, a proxy respondent may often be unaware of or 
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unfamiliar with the expenditures of all other household members. Even within a husband-andwife only household, it is unlikely that one spouse would be able to accurately report all 

expenses for the household. 

There is an obvious tradeoff: the presumed benefits of collecting information from all 

household members, including more accurate reporting, may or may not justify the costs, burden 

and risk of increased nonresponse associated with surveying all household members. One 

approach to eliminating proxy reporting is to provide individual diaries to every household 

member in conjunction with the household diary in the CED, rather than the current design of a 

single household diary. There are likely similar options for a modified CEQ design, including the 

use of different modes for different household members, which would reduce reliance on proxy 

reporting. 

2. Relevant Work 

Proxy reporting was identified as a potential weakness early in the history of the CE 

program. As part of a comprehensive questionnaire design review, Mathiowetz (1987) cited 

knowledge of other household members’ expenditures as a critical area for further investigation, 

noting that regardless of how well a questionnaire is designed, if a respondent has no knowledge 

of expenditures by other household members, those purchases will remain unreported. 

In an analysis of the agreement between self and proxy reports about common 

expenditures, Kojetin and Miller (1993) found that accurate proxy reporting can be difficult to 

obtain for expenditure data. Proxy reporters were likely to underreport expenditures compared to 

self reporters. Parents in particular tended to be quite poor reporters about their children’s 

expenditures, and this research took place before many school-aged children had their own 

debit/credit cards and cells phones that could access the internet. Further, when using a survey 

instrument based on CE questions to examine the agreement between self and proxy reports of 

specific items, Kojetin and Jerstad (1997) found “distressingly” low levels of proxy accuracy and 

completeness. 

As one approach to assessing the impact of proxy reporting on expenditures, Miller and 

Tucker (1993) developed a typology of family cohesion for predicting the level of proxy 

knowledge within CE households. Their purpose was to investigate the feasibility of developing 

a method, based on the cohesiveness of family members, for estimating the accuracy of proxy 
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responses from specific households. Using this method as a screening technique, interviews with 

every family member would only be attempted in those households with a very low probability 

of accurate proxy knowledge; in all other households, a proxy respondent would be used. In a 

follow-up analysis, Tucker and Miller (1993) determined that the hypothesized relationship 

between cohesion and proxy knowledge was only somewhat supported. 

At this time, incorporating an individual diary into the design of the CED is the most 

likely option for implementing a change related to proxy reporting. In a feasibility test of 

individual diaries conducted by BLS, Edgar et al. (2006) found that it was logistically feasible to 

place and collect individual diaries from a majority of household members. Although the sample 

size of the study is too small to draw meaningful conclusions, trends suggest that individual diary 

households reported higher levels of expenditures than control households. On the other hand, 

interviewers made more than twice as many visits to complete cases for individual diary 

households than for control households, leading to higher field costs associated with individual 

diaries. Other research under consideration includes using an existing CEQ “respondent” code to 

develop a simple model testing the hypothesis that multiple respondent multi-person households 

report more expenditures than single respondent multi-person households. Additionally, in an 

experiment conducted for the Italian Consumer Expenditure survey, Filippucci and Ferrante 

(1997) found that the use of individual diaries improved reporting for some, but not all, major 

expenditure items. 

3. Key Issues 

The response rate-data quality tradeoff is one of the key issues facing the CE redesign. 

More broadly, there is a generalized tradeoff to consider between increased burden and field 

costs, on the one hand, and more accurate reporting on the other hand. While other large-scale 

diary surveys may use individual diaries, their corresponding response rates are generally much 

lower than CED's approximately 75 percent response rate. Therefore, an important consideration 

is whether the expected increase in data quality associated with individual diaries, for example, 

outweighs the expected decrease in response rates and associated higher data collection costs. 
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4. Discussion Points 

We seek recommendations for both alternative designs for the CE Surveys and for 

research that could be conducted to determine the optimal design. A design change to address 

proxy reporting, such as using individual diaries in addition to a single household diary, is 

expected to increase reporting accuracy. However, whether the benefits of this type of change 

would outweigh possible costs is an unknown. Additionally, the primary constraint to any 

design change in the survey is that in order to meet its objectives, CE must produce detailed 

monthly expenditure estimates as well as annual expenditure estimates at the household level. In 

the discussion of this issue for CE, the following questions might be addressed: 

1. What are some key aspects of proxy reporting that the CE program should address 

during the redesign process? 

2. Are there any obvious tradeoffs that CE will need to balance when dealing with the topic 

of proxy reporting? 

a. How should the CE program manage the tradeoff between requiring participation 

from all CU members and allowing for proxy reporting on behalf of refusing 

members? 

b. How should the CE program evaluate and make a decision about the tradeoff 

between increases in respondent burden, increased field costs, and improved 

reporting quality? 

3. What designs could potentially reduce the reliance on proxy reporting: 

a. For the CEQ? 

b. For the CED? 

4. What are best-practice methods for collecting data from all household members while 

balancing the impact on response rates as a result of increased overall burden? 

5. What should the next steps be to explore and research this issue for a possible change in 

CE methods? 
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5. References 

Bickart, B.A., J. Blair, G. Menon, and S. Sudman (1990). Cognitive Aspects of Proxy Reporting 

of Behavior. In M. Goldberg, G. Gorn, and R. Pollay (Eds.) Advances in Consumer 

Research, Vol. 17, pp. 198-206. Provo, UT: Assoc. for Consumer Research. 

Edgar, J., J. Davis, S. Spell, R. Verlander, and G. Wetzel (2006). Individual Diary Feasibility 

Test Final Report. Bureau of Labor Statistics unpublished internal report.

Filippucci, C. and M.R. Ferrante (1997). Individual Diaries and Expense Documents in the 

Italian Consumer Expenditure Survey. Journal of Official Statistics, Vol.13, No.2, pp. 113-

121 

Kojetin, B. and S. Jerstad (1997). The Quality of Proxy Reports on the Consumer Expenditure 

Survey.

Kojetin, B. and L. Miller (1993). The Intrahousehold Communications Study: Estimating the 

Accuracy of Proxy Responses at the Dyadic Level. ASA. 

Lee, S., N. Mathiowetz, and R. Tourangeau (2004). Perceptions of Disability: The Effect of Selfand Proxy Response. Journal of Official Statistics, Vol.20, No.4,. pp. 671-686 

Mathiowetz, N. (1987). Questionnaire Design Advisory Conference. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

unpublished internal report.

Mathiowetz, N. and R. Groves (1985). The Effects of Respondent Rules on Health Survey 

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

Miller, L. and C. Tucker (1993). The Intrahousehold Communications Study: A Typology of 

Family Cohesion. ASA.

Moore, J.C. (1988). Self/Proxy Response Status and Survey Response Quality: A Review of 

Literature. Journal of Official Statistics, Vol. 4. No. 2, pp 155-172. 

Tucker, C. and L. Miller (1993). The Intrahousehold Communications Study: Family Cohesion 

and the Level of Knowledge. ASA.