Deciphering Duplicity: Characterizing Persons with Multiple Protected Identification Keys (PIKs) in the National Change of Address (NCOA) Database to Facilitate Migration Research

• Activity Number: 524
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Megan Benetsky*+ and Alison K. Fields and Amy O'Hara
• Companies: US Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: administrative records ; migration ; American Community Survey ; survey improvement

Abstract

The Census Bureau is conducting research on the use of administrative records (AR) as tools to enhance survey data products. A possible use of AR is improvement to edit and allocation procedures for ongoing data collections, such as the American Community Survey (ACS). Previous research (Benetsky, et al. 2012) explored this potential with the ACS question on residence 1 year ago. The analysis linked the ACS and the National Change of Address (NCOA) database by Personal Identification Key (PIK). Of the 35 million NCOA records, 45 percent received duplicate PIKs. These records were dropped to enable a straightforward first look into the results of the ACS and NCOA data linkage. This paper now analyzes the records with duplicate PIKs to determine a set of patterns and characterize migrants with duplicate PIKs. Cursory review showed several possible reasons for a duplicate, including, multiple moves within the data year, consolidating or splitting mailing addresses, and simply being PIKed incorrectly. This research will provide insight into the additional quality and production issues involved in using NCOA to improve ACS edit procedures.