TY - JOUR
T1 - Correcting for linkage errors in contingency tables
T2 - A cautionary tale
AU - Scholtus, Sander
AU - Shlomo, Natalie
AU - de Waal, Ton
N1 - The second author was supported by the EPSRC grant EP/K032208/1 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Data Linkage and Anonymization Programme. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies of Statistics Netherlands.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Record linkage aims to bring records together from two or more files that belong to the same statistical entity. Naïvely treating a linked file as if there are no linkage errors may lead to biased inference. We present two general approaches for compensating for linkage error when calculating and analysing a two-way contingency table for categorical data, and study the following question: under what conditions can a compensation approach improve on the naïve approach, where linkage error is not compensated for? To this end, we compare estimation errors, bias, variance and mean square error for the naïve approach and two compensation approaches by means of an analytical study as well as a simulation study.
AB - Record linkage aims to bring records together from two or more files that belong to the same statistical entity. Naïvely treating a linked file as if there are no linkage errors may lead to biased inference. We present two general approaches for compensating for linkage error when calculating and analysing a two-way contingency table for categorical data, and study the following question: under what conditions can a compensation approach improve on the naïve approach, where linkage error is not compensated for? To this end, we compare estimation errors, bias, variance and mean square error for the naïve approach and two compensation approaches by means of an analytical study as well as a simulation study.
KW - Contingency table
KW - Exchangeable linkage error model
KW - Linkage error correction
KW - Probabilistic record linkage
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118897018&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jspi.2021.10.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jspi.2021.10.004
M3 - Article
SN - 0378-3758
VL - 218
SP - 122
EP - 137
JO - Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference
JF - Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference
ER -