Briscoe M E
Sociol Health Illn. 1984 Nov;6(3):359-65. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10492006.
The practice of using proxy respondents in health surveys has been identified as a possible cause of confusion in the literature concerning sex differences in morbidity. Specifically, it has been suggested that proxy respondents (usually female) tend to under-report illnesses of absent persons (usually male) and hence the observation that women suffer from more illness than men may simply be an artifact of this method of data collection. In order to investigate proxy effects, 50 married couples were asked to report symptoms recently experienced by their spouses as well as themselves. A high level of agreement was found between husbands and wives regarding the number and severity of symptoms experienced by each individual, despite considerable differences in health status between sub-groups. Where there was a discrepancy, it was in the direction of the proxy respondent (of either sex) over-reporting symptoms. It follows from this that, if anything, the over-use of female interviewees would tend to minimise observed sex differences in illness. Thus, the excess female morbidity found in health surveys is not attributable to proxy effects but is more likely to result from differences in the way in which men and women experience symptoms.
在健康调查中使用代理受访者的做法，在有关发病率性别差异的文献中被认为是造成混淆的一个可能原因。具体而言，有人提出代理受访者（通常为女性）往往会少报不在场者（通常为男性）的疾病，因此女性比男性患更多疾病这一观察结果可能仅仅是这种数据收集方法的人为产物。为了研究代理效应，50对已婚夫妇被要求报告他们自己以及配偶最近经历的症状。尽管不同亚组之间的健康状况存在相当大的差异，但丈夫和妻子在每个人经历的症状数量和严重程度方面达成了高度一致。当出现差异时，是代理受访者（无论男女）多报症状的情况。由此可见，如果有什么影响的话，过度使用女性受访者往往会使观察到的疾病性别差异最小化。因此，健康调查中发现的女性发病率过高并非归因于代理效应，而更可能是由于男性和女性体验症状的方式不同所致。
