Symptom reporting during physician consultation. Results of a health diary study.

Most studies of physician consultation focus on decisions to contact health care providers. In this article, the authors examine decisions regarding which symptoms to report once people contact physicians. Data for the analysis were gathered through interviews and health diaries completed by a probability sample of 667 elderly people, based on a subsample of 152 respondents who consulted physicians during the 3-week reporting period. A qualitative analysis produced behavioral patterns underlying decisions to report some but not other symptoms experienced on the day of physician contact. Logistic regression was used to explore the extent to which predispositions of individuals that precede the onset of symptoms and the type of symptom experience explain the distribution of these reporting patterns. Variation in the percentages of people reporting particular symptoms indicates that these reporting patterns cannot be explained solely by the type of symptoms people experience. The decisions regarding which symptoms to report reflect respondents' attribution of cause, the impact of symptoms on their daily lives, and the broader health and social context in which they confront particular symptoms.