Agreement between older subjects and proxy informants on history of surgery and childbirth.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the agreement between proxy informants' reports of history of surgery and childbirth and older index subjects' own recall.


METHODS
Interrater reliability study.


METHODS
An outpatient family medicine clinic and a provincial electoral district in Montreal, Canada.


METHODS
Eighty-two subjects aged 65 years and older without cognitive impairment, identified from clinic and community settings, and each index subject's proxy respondent.


METHODS
Identical questionnaires were administered to index subjects and proxies.


RESULTS
Proxies failed to report 39% of non-childbirth surgeries reported by index subjects, but failed to report only 10% of childbirths. Female proxies were significantly less likely than male proxies to underreport non-childbirth surgeries after controlling for age of index subject and interval since surgery. Longer interval since surgery was significantly associated with greater underreporting, whereas age of the index subject and relationship between proxy and index subject were not. Agreement between proxies and index subjects on date of surgery was much higher for childbirths than for non-childbirth surgeries.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest that proxy respondents can provide reliable information on older women's history of childbirth but that use of proxy respondents for history of non-childbirth surgeries may result in substantial underreporting.
Robbins
J M
JM
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Wolfson
C M
CM
Bergman
H
H
Clarfield
A M
AM
Kleiman
S
S
Bilker
W
W
Baumgarten
M
M
D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007743:Labor, Obstetric; D008297:Male; D008487:Medical History Taking / Q000379:methods*; D008568:Memory; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015588:Observer Variation; D011247:Pregnancy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012737:Sex Factors; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D013997:Time Factors