Examining the quality of record linkage process using nationwide Brazilian administrative databases to build a large birth cohort

Abstract

Background: Research using linked routine population-based data collected for non-research purposes has increased in recent years because they are a rich and detailed source of information. The objective of this study is to present an approach to prepare and link data from administrative sources in a middle-income country, to estimate its quality and to identify potential sources of bias by comparing linked and non-linked individuals. Methods: We linked two administrative datasets with data covering the period 2001 to 2015, using maternal attributes (name, age, date of birth, and municipally of residence) from Brazil: live birth information system and the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort (created using administrative records from over 114 million individuals whose families applied for social assistance via the Unified Register for Social Programmes) implementing an in house developed linkage tool CIDACS-RL. We then estimated the proportion of highly probably link and examined the characteristics of missed-matches to identify any potential source of bias. Results: A total of 27,699,891 live births were submited to linkage with maternal information recorded in the baseline of the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort dataset of those, 16,447,414 (59.4%) children were found registered in the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort dataset. The proportion of highly probably link ranged from 39.3% in 2001 to 82.1% in 2014. A substantial improvement in the linkage after the introduction of maternal date of birth attribute, in 2011, was observed. Our analyses indicated a slightly higher proportion of missing data among missed matches and a higher proportion of people living in an urban area and self-declared as Caucasian among linked pairs when compared with non-linked sets. Discussion: We demonstrated that CIDACS-RL is capable of performing high quality linkage even with a limited number of common attributes, using indexation as a blocking strategy in larg e routine databases from a middleincome country. However, residual records occurred more among people under worse living conditions. The results presented in this study reinforce the need of evaluating linkage quality and when necessary to take linkage error into account for the analyses of any generated dataset.

Relationship between the Bolsa Família national cash transfer programme and suicide incidence in Brazil: A quasi-experimental study

“…Individuals who had died, and their cause of death, were identified in the cohort, by linking mortality data with the cohort baseline. Further details are provided in the Supporting information ( S2 Text , S1 Table and S1 Fig ) and are fully described elsewhere [ 29 , 29 , 34 , 36 , 37 ].…”

Evaluating the effect of Bolsa Familia, Brazil’s conditional cash transfer programme, on maternal and child health: A study protocol

“…The first will be a deterministic linkage, and the second will be based on the similarity index. More detailed information can be consulted in previous publications [ 21 , 22 ]. The CIDACS-RL is a tool for linking individual records based on identifiers: name, gender, age or date of birth, mother’s name, and the municipality of residence [ 22 ].…”

“…More detailed information can be consulted in previous publications [ 21 , 22 ]. The CIDACS-RL is a tool for linking individual records based on identifiers: name, gender, age or date of birth, mother’s name, and the municipality of residence [ 22 ]. All linking procedures will be performed at CIDACS (Center for Data Integration and Knowledge for Health, Fiocruz) [ 23 ] in a strict data protection environment and complying with ethical and legal standards [ 24 ].…”

Associations between cesarean delivery and child mortality: A national record linkage longitudinal study of 17.8 million births in Brazil

“…We excluded duplicate records and those with missing or implausible names. The linkage was performed with CIDACS-RL-Record Linkage, a novel record linkage tool developed to link large-scale administrative datasets at the CIDACS [ 18 ]. According to ethical and legal rules, linkage procedures were conducted at CIDACS in a strict data protection environment [ 19 ].…”