[Agreement between reports by the aged themselves and by their family members on physical and psychological status]

We examined the agreement between reports about physical and psychological status obtained from 286 community-dwelling elderly persons aged 65 years and over (subjects) and their family members (proxies). A total of 205 subject-proxy pairs were studied. Information from subjects was obtained by a self-administered questionnaire, and proxy respondents by an interview-administered questionnaire between Nov. 1997, and Feb 1998. Agreement was assessed by percent agreement and statistical kappa values. Percent agreement ranged from a low of 50.8 for anxiety to a high of 90.4 for difficult in swallowing. Kappa values ranged from a low of 0.21 for anxiety to a high of 0.67 for high frequency of falling. Median kappa values were higher in summary measure of physical status (0.52) than in that of psychological status (0.39). Compared to subjects, their partners tended to report higher level both in physical status and in psychological status, except for sleep compliance and introversion. The median kappa was 0.54 for spouses, whereas it was 0.39 for family members other than spouses. Overall, our finding indicated that partners could be aware of the concrete and directly-observable variables of physical status such as constipation, difficult in swallowing, but not so for subjective variables as psychological status such as depressed condition and introversion. Our results also suggested that the degree of agreement of proxy's perception and understanding of lifestyle of the elderly is closely related to health status of the elderly.