Administrative Data Research Centre for England, University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK.
Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
J Public Health (Oxf). 2018 Mar 1;40(1):191-198. doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fdx037.
Record linkage of administrative and survey data is increasingly used to generate evidence to inform policy and services. Although a powerful and efficient way of generating new information from existing data sets, errors related to data processing before, during and after linkage can bias results. However, researchers and users of linked data rarely have access to information that can be used to assess these biases or take them into account in analyses. As linked administrative data are increasingly used to provide evidence to guide policy and services, linkage error, which disproportionately affects disadvantaged groups, can undermine evidence for public health. We convened a group of researchers and experts from government data providers to develop guidance about the information that needs to be made available about the data linkage process, by data providers, data linkers, analysts and the researchers who write reports. The guidance goes beyond recommendations for information to be included in research reports. Our aim is to raise awareness of information that may be required at each step of the linkage pathway to improve the transparency, reproducibility, and accuracy of linkage processes, and the validity of analyses and interpretation of results.
将行政和调查数据进行关联，已越来越多地被用于生成证据，以支持政策和服务。虽然这是一种从现有数据集生成新信息的强大而高效的方法，但在关联之前、期间和之后与数据处理相关的错误可能会使结果产生偏差。然而，进行关联的研究人员和数据使用者很少能够获得可用于评估这些偏差或在分析中考虑这些偏差的信息。随着关联的行政数据越来越多地被用于提供证据来指导政策和服务，这种关联错误（不成比例地影响弱势群体）可能会破坏公共卫生的证据。我们召集了一组来自政府数据提供者的研究人员和专家，共同制定了关于数据提供者、数据链接器、分析师和撰写报告的研究人员需要提供的数据链接过程相关信息的指南。该指南不仅提出了应包含在研究报告中的信息建议。我们的目的是提高对链接路径中每个步骤可能需要的信息的认识，以提高链接过程的透明度、可重复性和准确性，以及分析和解释结果的有效性。
