Estimating Precision and Recall for Deterministic and Probabilistic Record Linkage
针对行政、调查和普查数据链接中难以判断链接正确与否的问题，提出了一种估计精确率的方法，适用于确定性和概率性两种链接方式，帮助评估链接质量。
Summary Linking administrative, survey and census files to enhance dimensions such as time and breadth or depth of detail is now common. Because a unique person identifier is often not available, records belonging to two different units (e.g. people) may be incorrectly linked. Estimating the proportion of links that are correct, called Precision, is difficult because, even after clerical review, there will remain uncertainty about whether a link is in fact correct or incorrect. Measures of Precision are useful when deciding whether or not it is worthwhile linking two files, when comparing alternative linking strategies and as a quality measure for estimates based on the linked file. This paper proposes an estimator of Precision for a linked file that has been created by either deterministic (or rules‐based) or probabilistic (where evidence for a link being a match is weighted against the evidence that it is not a match) linkage, both of which are widely used in practice. This paper shows that the proposed estimators perform well.