The Mediating Role of Proxy Respondents on the Relationship Between Cognitive Function and Self-Rated Health

Proxy respondents are an important tool in survey research, especially among people with cognitive impairment. However, proxy respondents may be unable to accurately answer subjective survey instruments for cognitively impaired persons. This study investigates the mediating effect of proxy status on the relationship between cognitive impairment and subjectively rated health.

Respondents from the 2018 wave of the Health and Retirement Study (N = 17,146) were included, and the Baron and Kenny method assessed the potential mediating role of having a proxy on subjectively rated health. Subjectively rated health and proxy status were dichotomously coded, and relationships between cognitive impairment, proxy status, and subjectively rated health were assessed using logistic regression.

Findings indicate that cognitive impairment is inversely associated with subjectively rated health, and it is directly associated with having a proxy. They also indicate that having a proxy is inversely related to subjectively rated health. When including proxy status and cognitive impairment in the same model, cognitive impairment no longer predicted subjectively rated health. This indicates that proxy status perfectly mediated the relationship between cognitive impairment and subjectively rated health.

Measuring the experiences of people with cognitive impairment is challenging in survey research due to the limiting features of cognitive impairment. Although having a proxy respondent helps address attrition-related measurement challenges in survey research, findings indicate that proxies report worse subjectively rated health for people with cognitive impairment compared to individuals with comparable levels of cognitive impairment without a proxy. Future research may benefit from exploring optimal proxy-respondent characteristics.