Courrier des statistiques N11 - 2024
Record Linkage: Purposes, Practices and Quality Issues
Record linkage reconciles individual data that are taken from various data files. It is used more and more frequently in official statistics, whether for analytical purposes, to investigate new subjects, or to improve production processes. Such statistical processing often raises issues relating to the imperfections of the data used and their volume.
Given the issues related to the compliance with data confidentiality, especially regarding personal data protection, an appropriate legal framework is required to implement them. A good knowledge of the data used and particular care in determining the parameters are also necessary to ensure the best possible quality of the results, since record linkage is never 100% reliable.
The quality of these matches is therefore a major issue for official statistics, and requires a direct assessment of the process, necessarily supplemented by a study of the statistical impact of the linkage on the data produced.
Paru le :06/01/2026
