An Empirical Comparison of Record Linkage Procedures

• Activity Number: 200
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods*
• Author(s): Shanti Gomatam*+ and Randy Carter and Mario Ariet and Glenn Mitchell
• Affiliation(s): University of South Florida/NISS and University of Florida and University of Florida and University of South Florida
• Keywords: exact matching ; hierarchical linkage strategies ; document linkage ; probabilistic matching ; AUTOMATCH ; stepwisedeterministic linkage

Abstract

We consider the problem of record linkage in the situation where we have only non-unique identifiers, like names, sex, race etc., as common identifiers in databases to be linked. For such situations, much work on probabilistic methods of record linkage can be found in the statistical literature. However, although many groups undoubtedly still use deterministic procedures, not much literature is available on deterministic strategies. Furthermore, there appears to exist almost no documentation on the comparison of results for the two strategies. In this work, we compare a stepwise deterministic linkage strategy with a probabilistic strategy, as implemented in AUTOMATCH, for a situation in which the truth is known. The comparison was carried out on a linkage between medical records from the Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Centers database and records from the Florida Department of Education. Social security numbers, available in both databases, were used to decide the true status of each record pair after matching. Match rates and error rates for the two strategies are compared, and a discussion of their similarities and differences, strengths, and weaknesses is presented.