Marriage and Family Therapy Research in Health Care: Investigating the Accuracy of Self and Family Reports of Medical Use. The American Journal of Family Therapy

Abstract

Health care research applied to couples and families has been hampered by the high cost of obtaining and hand reviewing medical charts. Fortunately, self report of medical use has been shown to be a useful measure of medical utilization with individuals. However, no such research has been reported to see if the same is true for couples and families. Self-reported medical use, for 130 clients seen at a marriage and family therapy clinic, in addition to their report of family members’ medical use, was compared with medical records. Results showed that self-report, spouse reports, and parent reports of medical visits were significantly correlated with medical records. These results suggest that researchers and clinicians may reliably use self and family member’s reports instead of reviews of medical charts.