Issues in Proxy Reporting in the Consumer Expenditure Survey 

Nora Cate Schaeffer 

University of Wisconsin – Madison 

16 November 2010 

Proxy reporting about expenditures 

 Although proxy reporting is ubiquitous in surveys – for example in completing household rosters, 

reporting labor force participation, and detailing the health status of spouses and children – the use of 

proxy reporting for detailed reporting of expenditures in the Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey entails 

challenges that differ from those for other topics and other surveys. Moore’s (1988) review of studies 

about proxy reporting concluded that the studies available at that time did not point to a clear advantage 

for self reporters, but that the available evidence was not definitive. However, even though differences 

between proxy reports and self reports about participation in the labor market or major illnesses may have 

been modest (see Moore 1988), these findings cannot be extrapolated to reporting about expenditures by a 

consumer unit. More recent research suggests that proxy reports are most likely to be comparable to 

those given by the person if the proxy has an opportunity to have direct knowledge (either by 

participation or conversation) of the event, and the opportunities for such knowledge can be expected to 

be greater if the event reported about is engaged in regularly over a long period of time and is salient or 

important for other reasons, such as emotional or financial reasons (see, e.g., Sudman et al. 1994 ; 

Schwarz and Wellens 1997; Kojetin and Miller 1993; Tucker and Miller 1993). Clearly, labor force 

participation and major illnesses may share some of these features in a way that many expenditures do not. 

The somewhat limited literature that addresses issues relevant to assessing proxy reporting about 

expenditures has recently been reviewed by Mathiowetz (2010) and earlier by Kojetin and Jerstad (1997). 

There is evidence that proxy reporting about expenditures might be of poor quality. Kojetin and Jerstad 

(1997) compared answers of self and proxy reporters about expenditures in a task simpler than that in the 

CE Interview Survey. They concluded that proxy reports were incomplete, even when considering 

reports at the category level, and more detailed reports were of even poorer quality. The number of 

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purchases and their cost were significantly underreported by proxy reporters, and a comparison of reports 

of specific purchases indicated that proxy reports were incomplete. Because the task that Kojetin and 

Jerstad studied was simpler than that in the CE Interview Survey (e.g., one-month recall, reporting at 

grosser levels for some purchases) one would expect quality in the CE Interview Survey and CE Diary 

Survey to be even lower than the low quality they describe. Furthermore, it is useful to bear in mind that 

this negative assessment of the likely quality of proxy reports is based on a comparison to self reports – 

which are also flawed -- rather than on a comparison with an accurate criterion. Despite their conclusion 

that “the completeness and accuracy of proxy reports of these expenditures was distressingly low” (1991, 

p. 16), Kojetin and Jerstad also concluded that proxy reports are the only “realistic operational 

alternative” to self reports for expenditures. In the intervening years, however, there are reasons to 

suspect that the quality of self reports may be in decline, some features of the way data are collected that 

supported the view that proxy reports are the only realistic alternative to self reports have eroded, and 

other opportunities to collect expenditure data have become available. 

Issues in redesigning the CE Interview Survey and CE Diary Survey 

Ideally, in designing a study, a researcher begins with the questions: What do you want to know, and 

where is that information? In the case of a project as massive as the CE Survey, another question must 

be added, where will the information be by the time the redesigned CE is implemented? 

The CE Survey’s reliance on self and proxy reports for information about expenditures originated in a 

data collection environment very different from that found in many consumer units today. Self and 

proxy reports can only achieve even the limited level of accuracy they are capable of if the values being 

reported are actually encoded and if recall can be aided by records when that is needed. Several features 

of contemporary domestic information are particularly relevant for the quality of both self and proxy 

reports in the CE Survey: 

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1. Electronic and automatic payments may provide consumers little opportunity to observe and 

encode the values we will later ask them about, and use of these forms of payments can only be 

expected to increase both within and between consumer units. 

2. The records that might supplement memory during an interview may be scattered over various 

websites – one for telephone service, one for gas and electric, and so on – stored in electronic 

images of bank transactions in an electronic bank statement, or delivered by e-mail for those who 

have gone “paperless.” 

3. Electronic records may be precise, but uninformative for some requirements of the CE Interview 

or Diary: Records may be difficult to interpret – for example, the entry on the bank statement 

may note that a payment was made, but it may not be obvious to the consumer which credit card 

the payment was for. Or electronic records may give a precise total because the bank statement 

notes the amount of a debit card transaction, but exactly what groceries were paid for is not 

indicated. 

These changes are likely to compromise the quality of both self and proxy reports. Furthermore, current 

developments in electronic records and developments to come, will not be universally adopted by 

consumers. Consumer units are now, and probably will be increasingly, heterogeneous in the types of 

records of expenditures they are exposed to and maintain. The heterogeneity within and between 

consumer units in the types of records they maintain and the ways in which members of a consumer unit 

can access those records places demands on CE Survey interviewers and instruments, and the way that 

interviewers and survey instruments interact with these records affects how much the CE burdens 

respondents. 

 Just as the organization of information about expenditures in consumer units has changed since 

the CE Survey was designed, so has the internal organization of the records themselves changed. As a 

simple, but relevant, example, even a few years ago, a receipt was an uninformative list of prices, with no 

indication of what had been purchased. Currently, most receipts include detail about each item purchased, 

whether coupons were used, where the purchase took place, and how payment was made. This increase 

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in the level of detail in receipts and the persistence of electronic records present both opportunities and 

challenges for the CE Survey. 

Use of records in CE 

As these remarks suggest, an alternative to reliance on proxy – and self – reports is greater and more 

systematic use of records. If encoding of transactions by respondents deteriorates, respondents will either 

rely more heavily on records or on estimation and guessing. Use of records could result in more 

complete data and reduce bias and presumably variable error as well. For example, Safir and Goldenberg 

(2008), analyzing CEQ data collected between April 2003 and March 2007, reported that aggregate total 

expenditures were higher when the interviewer reported that the respondent consults records and receipts. 

In an earlier study of record use in the SIPP cognitive research, Moore, Marquis, and Bogen (1994) found 

that although record use did not reduce omissions of sources of income, for sources of income that were 

reported, consulting records reduced underreporting of amounts. In an analysis of CEQ data collected 

between April 2006 and March 2008, Edgar and Gonzalez (2009) concluded that the odds that editing 

would be required was lower for those who consulted utility bills and other records. 

 Attempting to increase and systematize the use of records has different implications for the CE 

Interview and CE Diary because of their different reference periods and the different types of purchases 

they focus on. For the CE Diary, a design in which respondents made diary entries only for purchases for 

which they did not have detailed receipts would reduce burden substantially, but would require that 

individual purchases recorded on detailed receipts be classified or coded, either in consultation with the 

interviewer or centrally. It is possible that rewarding respondents for keeping receipts by not requiring 

that those purchases also have diary entries could motivate respondents to be more comprehensive in 

saving receipts (though it could also lead to less complete data if respondents did not record purchases for 

which they did not have receipts). For some respondents, the longer reference period used by the CE 

Interview and the types of purchases the CE Interview focuses on would require that the respondent 

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consult records from a number of online and paper sources, and instruments and interviewer training 

would have to accommodate the use of records in multiple modes. By the time the redesigned CE Survey 

is fielded, it is possible that records could be scanned in the field and that optical character recognition 

could make some scanned records more fully digital. 

Just as conclusions about whether or not proxy reports are adequate will necessarily be 

conditional (on the topic, the reference period, the relationship between self and proxy, etc.), so must be 

conclusions about the use of records. In addition to the accessibility, relevance, clarity, and portability of 

records, one must consider how easily they can be translated into the information sought by the survey. 

In an extreme situation in which the translation is so complex that the respondent and interviewer cannot 

manage the translation, the records can serve as a way of identifying another system (such as energy 

providers) from which information of higher quality can be obtained (O’Brien 2010), but this step is 

unlikely to be integrated into the CE Survey. 

 One reason that consumer units might be delegated the burden of transcribing self and proxy 

reports about purchases onto data collection forms (either directly in the diary or via the interviewer in the 

interview) is to remove the cost of dealing with records from the CE Survey. There is reason to believe 

that the current survey procedures pay a price in accuracy; it is also not clear how long consumer units 

will be bear the burden of translation and transcription given them by the CE Survey. However, the 

alternative, the use of records, is one of those components of a survey design that is appealing in principle 

but can become unwieldy as a large production survey attempts to deal with the variety and other details 

of the records respondents might produce. One appropriate comparison for the variability in the condition 

of records is the variability in the quality of the diary records that respondents keep. In addition, record 

use is a component of survey design that needs to be reassessed regularly because the form that records 

take and the methods available for dealing with those records keeps changing. 

Roles of (or for?) technology 

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One of the challenges in redesigning the CE Survey is envisioning the state of technology at the time the 

redesigned survey enters the field. Some changes seem particularly important because of their 

implications for how respondents can be contacted, where their records might reside, and how diaries or 

other reports will be collected. Examples of changes that could be important for the CE Survey include 

reduced frequency of landlines and substitution of increasingly powerful smartphones (capable of making 

digital audio and digital visual records) for laptops and desktop computers. Implications of these changes 

for the CE Survey include: 

1. Contacts with respondents become both less expensive and less intrusive. For example, 

automatically generated text messages could remind respondents to keep receipts or record 

purchases for which they do not have receipts, either at regular or random intervals. Such text 

reminders, even though they are as impersonal as a robocall with a digital voice, may not be 

experienced as impersonal (and irritating) in the same way, because an automatic text message 

would betray its non-human origins in fewer ways than would a digitized voice. Similarly, email 

with links to web-based diaries and recording forms could result in more contemporaneous 

reporting for some consumer units. 

2. Consumer units could be encouraged to track purchases using technology in flexible and varied 

ways. For some respondents the record of a purchase could be an audio memo on a phone (which 

some future reliable voice recognition software could reformat as text), a photograph of a receipt 

(possibly with a camera provided by the study), or an entry in a web-based diary made from a 

smartphone at the time of purchase that could supplement (or substitute for) a paper diary kept at 

home. 

3. Methods for reporting information about purchases for the CE Survey could also be tailored to 

the consumer unit’s technology, substituting for current paper technology. For consumer units 

with appropriate equipment and access, web-based diaries or data collection forms could be 

developed to support the use of records and the concurrent recording of expenditure information 

for both the CE Interview and CE Diary. 

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4. Collection of (supplementary) documentation of expenditures could be digitized. Records of 

respondents that could not be turned over (or e-mailed) to the interviewer might be scanned in the 

field (for both the CE Interview and CE Diary). 

Segmentation of respondents and differentiation in field approaches 

Regardless of whether a redesigned CE Survey relies more on records than the current design, persists in 

using proxy reports, or adopts an individual diary model, implementation will probably need to segment 

consumer units with respect to their composition, likely patterns of expenditures, and their technological 

profile. For some types of events (in this case, some types of expenditures), the relationship between the 

proxy and the person reported about (e.g., the relationship of spouse or of parent and child) serves as a 

proxy for some of these features of events that facilitate agreement between self and proxy reports. 

 In consumer units with only a single adult (some portion of 44% of consumer units are “single 

person and other consumer units”) proxy reporting is not an issue (see Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009, 

Table 59). In consumer units with only husband and wife (22% of consumer units plus presumably those 

among the “other consumer units” in which there are only two adult partners), a single Main Record 

Collector might shoulder the burden of assembling the records needed for the CE Interview or the receipts 

needed for the CE Diary. Using a single Main Record Collector for these consumer units could result in 

little loss of data quality as compared to a design in which there was a Main Record Collector and an 

Individual Record Collector (Kojetin and Jerstad 1997; Edgar et al. 2006). In the remaining 

(approximately 30% of) consumer units with children over 6, the test of augmenting a Main Diary Keeper 

with Individual Diaries for consumer units with older children, suggests that using this approach is likely 

to improve the quality of reporting (Edgar et al. 2006).

 A second type of segmentation with potential to improve data quality is segmentation based on 

likely spending patterns. Research would be needed to develop models to predict likely spending 

patterns based on information provided at the initial interview. Such information could be used to target 

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follow-up (such as text or email reminders) aimed at most frequent expenditures, expenditures most likely 

to be overlooked, or consumer units most likely to need reminding. 

 A third potentially useful segmentation is based on the technologies used by the consumer unit, 

an inventory of which would be taken in the first interview and include all potential record collectors and 

reporters. Although some consumer units will continue to require paper, that number will rapidly decline 

– and at some point it will become cheaper to provide such consumer units with devices for responding 

than to maintain a paper data collection stream. 

Although segmenting consumer units in various ways and tailoring approaches based on this 

segmentation requires substantial changes in design, it can be dismissed only if one calculates that 

consumer units will continue to accept current levels of burden, levels that will soon begin to appear even 

more burdensome as consumer units become less acclimated to working with paper and perceive it as 

clumsy. 

Research in support of redesign 

The proposals put forward above are, obviously, sketchy and superficial; some are easy to dismiss (and 

some probably deserve that fate). But redesigning the CE Survey would seem to require at an early phase 

background research of several kinds using in-depth field studies: 

1. Describing the technology profile of consumer units of different compositions and income levels. 

In addition to describing hardware and software, such a profile would examine how consumer 

units use technology – smartphones, laptops, and desktops -- in their spending at home, work, and 

while traveling. 

2. Complementary studies of what consumer units buy where, and where expenditures can be 

tracked. Such studies would document what types of purchases are bought or paid for over the 

web using the technologies just mentioned; what bills consumer units pay electronically; what 

payments are made automatically; how debit cards are used; what payments are reimbursed by 

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reimbursement accounts or insurance. In addition, field studies would explore where records of 

those transactions reside: what information is download into account management software; 

whether credit card, utility, and other bills are on paper, in e-mail, or scattered over vendors’ 

websites. 

3. Studies of receipts and records of expenditures. One daunting aspect of contemplating a greater 

reliance on records is the variety of forms records can take, the challenges that interviewers might 

face interpreting them, and the problems of turning those receipts into survey records. The goal 

of these field studies would be to collect records from a sample of consumer units to investigate 

how the CE survey could manage and code them. 

Additional research with the existing CE Interview and CE Diary data that could inform a redesign 

include examining how records are currently used in the survey and by which consumer units. In addition, 

several types of profiles of consumer units that seem promising could be developed and tested, 

particularly characterizing consumer units with different patterns of item nonresponse and with different 

patterns of expenditure. One goal would be to predict which consumer units might need more extensive 

support to provide data, so that interviewing resources are deployed where they are likely to do the most 

good. Currently field organizations are attempting to develop and apply models that predict the 

likelihood of participation in order to guide the investment of scarce field resources where they are most 

likely to be effective; in an effort as massive and demanding as the CE Survey, such an approach could be 

extended to guide and tailor the application of such interviewing resources as reminders, personal 

telephone calls, visits from the interviewer, additional training for respondents, specialized instruments, 

and such. 

Research about proxy reporting 

If the redesign effort continues in a more traditional direction, and further studies of proxy reporters are 

seen as desirable, supporting studies should, if possible, move beyond using someone who reports for 

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themselves as the criterion and to consider variable response errors as well as bias. In addition to such 

criterion-based studies, self and proxy reporters can be compared with respect to the types and number of 

items reported, the level of detail at which items are reported, level of spending reported, proportion of 

items reported that need editing, as well as the use of records. Although recent studies of proxy reporting 

consider the relationship of the proxy to the events being reported about, examinations of the accuracy of 

“proxy” reporters also need to consider important features of how a proxy is embedded in the overall 

survey design, which affects how well a proxy reporter performs. These include: 

1. What is being recalled: Proxy reporting about expenditures is different from proxy reporting 

about health conditions or participation in the labor market, and proxy reporting may be more 

adequate for some types of expenditures than for others (see for example, Kojetin and Jerstad 

(1997)). In part, this is because the relationship of a proxy to an event varies depending on the 

event, as already noted. But it is also because some events (for example, some purchases) are 

associated with a collectivity (e.g., a family car), while other events are associated only with the 

individual (e.g., buying a new scarf). Some purchases may be individual in the sense that they 

are made by a person or made with that person’s “own” funds. Some purchases may be made on 

behalf of the consumer unit or with shared resources. 

2. The length of the reference period. For example, over three months, proxies may have more 

opportunity to observe (or to forget about) items that have been purchased than they do in a week. 

3. The details of the task and the medium for reporting. As already suggested, proxy reporting for 

a three-month recall period is different from proxy reporting for two one-week diaries; this may 

partly be because the events asked about using a three-month recall period are different from 

those asked about in one-week diaries. But it may also be that details of the survey design, such 

as reminder calls from an interviewer, have different implications for self and proxy reports. 

Conclusion 

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Although the assignment for this discussion was proxy reporting, the available literature suggests several 

conclusions that required expanding the discussion: 

1. A comparison between proxy reporters and self reports is a weak starting point for assessing the 

advantages and disadvantages of proxy reporters. Self reports may be the criterion available in 

most research designs, but that criterion will overestimate the success of proxy report, and distract 

attention from simultaneously considering the impact of errors in self reports. 

2. The existing literature is of limited use because the quality of proxy reports cannot be generalized 

from one domain to another. The literature suggests that the quality of proxy reports about 

expenditures appears to be poor. 

3. The ways in which consumer units spend have become more varied, and records that store the 

information sought by the CE Survey have become more detailed and potentially useful for data 

collection. 

4. The technologies available for collecting and recording consumer purchases have expanded since 

the CE Survey was designed and that expansion will only continue. 

5. The population’s tolerance of burden can be expected to continue to decrease, and considerations 

of both nonresponse and response error require designing for reduced burden. 

6. In evaluating the contributions of proxy reporting – or increased reliance on records – an attempt 

should be made to consider total survey error, in particular variable and fixed response error and 

item nonresponse in addition to unit nonresponse and sampling error. Obviously, precise 

estimates of all these sources of error cannot be made. Nevertheless, discussions should make an 

effort to consider the likely order of magnitude of all these sources of errors, so that decisions 

about one element in the survey design, such as proxy reports, are placed in context. 

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