Participant versus informant reports of changes in social, emotional, and financial functioning after an exercise...

Informant reports are potentially valuable, yet underutilized, measures for non-cognitive outcomes in older adults. Specifically, informant reports from close others may offer insights into changes in observable functional status and behavior beyond what participants report. In the context of an experimental exercise protocol in older adults, informant reports could potentially demonstrate changes in functional status and behavior that are unnoticed by participants but observable by others, based on the reliability of some informant report measures in this population. Given the interdependence of self-report and informant-report measures of a participant's behavior, this study aimed to investigate the association between self-report and informant-report measures across an experimental exercise protocol by utilizing an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) approach to concurrently analyze the report styles. A total of 273 participants (61.17% Female, 91.57% White, M _age = 67.92) and 117 informants (primarily spouses and/or family members) participated in the study. Participants completed a 16-week exercise program. Participants were asked to report on their life satisfaction, financial capacity, and problems with daily functioning at baseline and the end of the program, while informants were asked to report on their interpretation of the participant's life satisfaction, financial capacity, and problems with daily functioning at the same timepoints. APIMs showed that higher informant-reported baseline life satisfaction was associated with higher participant self-reported life satisfaction following the 16-week experimental protocol. In contrast, there was divergence in self-reported and informant-reported financial capacity. Higher baseline informant reports were associated with lower informant follow-up reports but higher participant follow-up reports. Finally, daily functioning was more aligned. Participants saw an overall decrease in problems with daily functioning from baseline to follow-up, and higher participant baseline reports of problems with daily functioning were associated with lower follow-up reports in both participants and informants. The analysis shows that the APIM effectively captures concordance and discrepancy between report styles and suggests APIM may be an effective tool to most accurately interpret outcomes in older adults when both self-report and informant-report measures are collected.