Fast Bayesian Record Linkage With Record-Specific Disagreement Parameters

Researchers are often interested in linking individuals between two datasets that lack a common unique identifier. Matching procedures often struggle to match records with common names, birthplaces, or other field values. Computational feasibility is also a challenge, particularly when linking large datasets. We develop a Bayesian method for automated probabilistic record linkage and show it recovers more than 50% more true matches, holding accuracy constant, than comparable methods in a matching of military recruitment data to the 1900 U.S. Census for which expert-labeled matches are available. Our approach, which builds on a recent state-of-the-art Bayesian method, refines the modeling of comparison data, allowing disagreement probability parameters conditional on nonmatch status to be record-specific in the smaller of the two datasets. This flexibility significantly improves matching when many records share common field values. We show that our method is computationally feasible in practice, despite the added complexity, with an R/C++ implementation that achieves a significant improvement in speed over comparable recent methods. We also suggest a lightweight method for treatment of very common names and show how to estimate true positive rate and positive predictive value when true match status is unavailable.