Figure 2

Flow chart of subjects for proxy informant interview. Of 276 deceased men eligible for inclusion because they lived in one of the 5 major towns in Estonia, for 7% it was not possible to find out whether they had had a family as their bodies were either collected by the funeral agency or their funeral was organised by the local authorities. Of those for whom it was possible to determine whether they had a family, 7% had no family (lived alone). Of the remaining 239 deceased men, 95% had families eligible for interview, i.e. at least one family member had had daily contact with the deceased during the last year before his death. Of these, a proxy interview was conducted for 75%, while 20% of families refused, and 5% did not respond to contact attempts. Overall we obtained proxy interviews for 61% (169/276) of all eligible deceased men, representing 75% of all where we knew that there were eligible proxy informants (169/226).