Incongruent caregiver-care recipient reports by care task and relationship type

Research on unpaid caregiving often relies on reports from either caregivers (CG) or care recipients (CR), yet dyadic accounts of whether care was provided and received often diverge. This study examines the extent of care report agreement-defined as caregivers and care recipients giving consistent reports of whether help with a task was provided or not-across care tasks (mobility, self-care, household chores, shopping, transportation, banking, and medication tracking) and by relationship type (spousal, parent-child, other kin, and nonkin dyads).

We pooled data from the 2011, 2015, and 2017 rounds of the National Study of Caregiving linked with the corresponding rounds of the National Health and Aging Trends Study. Analyses included descriptive statistics on 4 patterns of dyadic reports (CG-no/CR-no, CG-yes/CR-yes, CG-no/CR-yes, and CG-yes/CR-no) by care task and multinomial logistic regression models assessing variations in report congruence by relationship type.

Agreement was highest for banking tasks and lowest for mobility help. In cases of disagreement, caregivers more often reported providing help than care recipients reported receiving it. Spousal dyads showed the highest agreement across most tasks, whereas parent-child, other kin, and nonkin dyads exhibited broadly comparable levels of agreement.

Finding underscores the importance of considering the quality and context of care reports. Amidst an increasingly complex and diverse care landscape, recognizing patterns of care reporting by task and relationship type is critical for improving survey design, advancing caregiving research, and informing policies to better support unpaid caregivers.