Some helpful resources for integrating authorities, including some produced by various data linkage units in Australia, are listed below.
- Christen, P, & Goiser, K, 2005, ‘Quality and Complexity measures for Data Linkage and Deduplication’
- Christen P, 2012, Concepts and Techniques for Record Linkage, Entity Resolution, and Duplicate Detection
- The Population Health Research Network resources
- The Centre for Health Record Linkage (CHeReL) has provided a list of edit checks (e.g. knowledge of data dictionaries, awareness of changes in coding of time) that should be performed on linked datasets. See: CHeReL edit checks
- CHeReL has also produced a list of quality assurance checks to regularly review and validate their linkage keys to detect false links. These procedures include internal consistency checks of the data items used in developing the master linkage and statistical linkage keys. See: CHeReL Quality Assurance
- The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have produced National best practice guidelines for data linkage activities relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. While these guidelines relate specifically to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they include many elements of relevance to data linking generally, including discussions of data linkage methods, the data linkage process and assessing the quality of data linkage.
The Data Linking Information Series provides links to other documentation.
For more information on the role of integrating authorities see:
- Drafting project agreements
- Manage datasets for the duration of data integration projects
- A protective policy environment
- Technical infrastructure and expertise
- Technical resources for integrating authorities
- The separation principle
- Transparency in operations