The paper examines the correspondence between husbands’ and wives’ own reported attitudes about the timing/occurrence of their most recent pregnancy and proxy reports about those attitudes provided by their spouses. Survey data from the Philippines are used to analyze the
degree to which agreement between proxy reports obtained from spouses and the respondents’ own reported attitudes is due to chance. Potential problems are explored regarding the use of proxy reports for assessing spousal attitudes regarding pregnancy intendedness. Several factors
that contribute to the mismatch between male and female respondents’ reported attitudes and their spouses’ proxy reports of those attitudes are identified. The paper concludes with some recommendations about the use of proxy reports when collecting data about pregnancy
intendedness and related fertility issues.
