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Table 2 Agreement between information on census record and on death certificate for key variables for the probabilistic main SNC linkage and for the additional pragmatic linkages of deaths

From: Impact of unlinked deaths and coding changes on mortality trends in the Swiss National Cohort

Variable

Mortality and census records with identical value of variable (%)

 

SNC linkageϮ

Linkage of unlinked deaths(step1)

Linkage of unlinked deaths(step 2)

 

(n=996,980)

(n=51,002)

(n=5,263)

Sex

   

(% identical)

99.95%

100.0%

100.0%

Date of birth

   

(% identical)

97.1%

53.2%

0.3%

(Difference in days: 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile)

(0, 0, 0)

(0, 0, 0)

(−109, -12, 96)

Marital status

   

(% identical)

92.0%

79.3%

55.7%

(% identical or plausible change*)

99.7%

100.0%

87.9%

Nationality

   

(% identical)

99.1%

100.0%

95.9%

Place of residence

   

(% identical)

89.4%

23.0%

11.3%

  1. Ϯ Done by probabilistic linkage which attributes different log(likelihood ratios) for being the same person based on full agreement, full disagreement, plausible change, or possible recording error of information on sex, date of birth, marital status, nationality, place of residence, religion, date of birth of wife/husband (if available) etc.
  2. * Plausible changes are single to married, married to divorced, married to widowed, divorced to married, widowed to married.