Nurses sometimes fail to understand the behaviour of individuals with severe dementia. Information from a next of kin may help to bridge this communicative gap. One factor that influences a person’s reaction to a disease is her/his personality and ability to cope with stress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the inter-rater agreement between healthy elderly people`s self-assessment and the assessment made by a next of kin concerning personality and Sense of Coherence. The participants (n=154) answered questions from the Eysenck personality scale and the Antonovsky SOC scale. The study shows high or moderate agreement in ratings when analysed by means of an intra-class correlation coefficient (range between r =.57 and r = .72) and the results indicate that in general a close relative is able to report on the personality of a next of kin.  The inter-rater agreement was high on SOC and Extraversion and somewhat lower on Neuroticism. For Neuroticism, length of time of relationship increased the odds for a good inter-rater agreement.  Thus seemingly a next of kin is a reliable informant for the elderly in general and is probably also able to add information useful in the nursing care of people with a dementia disease.