Abstract:
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We describe the creation and maintenance of a record linkage system developed at Statistics Canada to transform cross-sectional national post-secondary student and apprentice databases into longitudinal files. The resulting system facilitates the study of student pathways and policy-relevant issues such as access to education, cost, and student outcomes. We focus the description on the foundational work, consisting of internal linkage of the component databases to obtain headcounts, hierarchical external linkage to administrative data to obtain information on graduate outcomes, and longitudinal linkage of databases to each other to determine student pathways. As new yearly data becomes available, it is incorporated into the existing database system, the so-called Education Master File, which is used for further linkages to other data sources and to produce analytical files.
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