3-1.2 An iterative method for estimating reliability.
A good estimate of the reliability of
a field is the relative frequency of agreement in comparisons between matched records. If it is not
possible to get a measure of reliability from a set of matched records, it might be possible to estimate
this value through performing record linkage iteratively as follows:
- Use an intuitive estimate of the reliability
- Perform record linkage with a high threshold
- This assures that most linked records will be matched
- Measure the reliability of the weighting fields in the linked comparisons
- Repeat
To get a reliability for blocking fields it is crucial to iterate
this whol iteration, but using a different blocking scheme each time. This may result in smaller
sets of comparisons and thus less confident measures of the reliability for these fields.
