The Use of Names for Linking Personal Records

Newcombe, Howard B.; Fair, Martha E.; Lalonde, Pierre

doi:10.1080/01621459.1992.10476278

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…A signiÿcant advantage of the probabilistic strategy is the ability to use value-speciÿc estimates of probabilities (see Newcombe et al [36] and Winkler [25]) for the m( ) and u( ) probabilities to improve the linkage. Thus, for example, agreement on rare values of the jth identifying variable would be given higher values for m( j ) than agreement on common values.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical comparison of record linkage procedures

Gomatam

Carter

Ariet

et al. 2002

Statistics in Medicine

100

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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 educational 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.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical comparison of record linkage procedures

Gomatam

Carter

Ariet

et al. 2002

Statistics in Medicine

100

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“…30–32 Searches were also made through the United States and the United Kingdom as needed. As of the common closing date of December 31, 1992, death information was complete for the 1952 sample but vital status remained unknown for 4 persons of the 1970 sample.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Trends in Mortality Associated with Depression: Findings from the Stirling County Study

et al. 2010

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Objective The question addressed is whether a mortality risk associated with depression in a 1952 representative sample of Stirling County adults changed in a new sample of 1970 and whether there was a change in relationships to cigarette smoking and alcoholism. Method Sample members were interviewed about depression and cigarette smoking. General physicians were interviewed by psychiatrists regarding alcoholism. Information about death as of December 31, 1992 was provided by Statistics Canada. Proportional hazards models were fitted in the two samples to assess the mortality risks associated with depression among men and women over 20 years of follow-up, and additionally among men with heavy smoking and alcoholism. Specific causes of death were investigated. Results Hazard ratios representing the association between depression and premature death among men were 2.6 (95%CI 1.4 to 4.9) and 2.8 (95%CI 1.5 to 5.1) respectively in the 1952 and 1970 samples for the first 10 years of follow-up. Hazard ratios for women were 1.4 (95%CI 0.6 to 3.2) and 1.2 (95%CI 0.5 to 2.9). The risk associated with depression among men was independent of alcoholism and heavy smoking. Depression and alcoholism were significantly associated with death due to external causes and to circulatory disease; heavy smoking with malignant neoplasms. Conclusion The mortality associated with depression did not change over the period of 1952 to 1970. Depressed men experienced a significant mortality risk that was not matched among depressed women and also was not due to alcoholism and heavy smoking.

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“…Implementation of this algorithm could conceivably make it possible to merge student records even if a unique student ID were not available at all. Similar name‐based matching algorithms have been proposed elsewhere (Cohen, Ravikumar, & Fienberg, 2003; Newcombe, Fair, & Lalonde, 1992). In this case, the LND could be computed by comparing all N 1 names in the year 1 data file to all N 2 names in the year 2 data file.…”

Section: Generalizations Of the Lndmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of the Levenshtein Distance Metric for the Construction of Longitudinal Data Files

Doran

Wamelen

2010

Educational Measurement

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The analysis of longitudinal data in education is becoming more prevalent given the nature of testing systems constructed for No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). However, constructing the longitudinal data files remains a significant challenge. Students move into new schools, but in many cases the unique identifiers (ID) that should remain constant for each student change. As a result, different students frequently share the same ID, and merging records for an ID that is erroneously assigned to different students clearly becomes problematic. In small data sets, quality assurance of the merge can proceed through human reviews of the data to ensure all merged records are properly joined. However, in data sets with hundreds of thousands of cases, quality assurance via human review is impossible. While the record linkage literature has many applications in other disciplines, the educational measurement literature lacks details of formal protocols that can be used for quality assurance procedures for longitudinal data files. This article presents an empirical quality assurance procedure that may be used to verify the integrity of the merges performed for longitudinal analysis. We also discuss possible extensions that would permit merges to occur even when unique identifiers are not available.

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The Use of Names for Linking Personal Records

Cited by 22 publications

References 16 publications

An empirical comparison of record linkage procedures

An empirical comparison of record linkage procedures

Time Trends in Mortality Associated with Depression: Findings from the Stirling County Study

Application of the Levenshtein Distance Metric for the Construction of Longitudinal Data Files

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