Panel: Practical approaches of record linkage in RDCs

The planned session deals with the application of record linkage by several German institutions. The paper "German Record Linkage Center (GRLC)" describes the GRLC, a long-term infastructure facility with the main goal to increase the number and quality of record-linkage applications in order to increase the analytical power of existing data, and to unlock new data sources for research. Afterwards, two practical applications of record linkage are presented. The paper "The project "combined firm data for Germany" Access to combined business micro data" is about a research project carried out by different institutions which provide researchers with enterprise-level micro data. In the course of the project data of the participating instiutions has been merged. Because of the lack of a direct identifier the process of data integration has been very complex and time consuming. That is why record linkage was used. In this context, different string comparisons had to be tested and evaluated. The final paper "German census 2011 as a mixed method design" has a related background: For this years census it was - for the first time - decided not to interview every household but to use a register-based design. Thus, the final data will be a mix of register based complete census and sample survey. Next to a description of the assessment method used the presentation will introduce the way the collected datasets are merged. Concerning the methodology, this procedure is appealing because the used data have no common identifiers. Aditionally, the presentation will introduce the statistical generation of the households. Overall, the session should be of interest for all conference participants dealing with data integration and the application of record linkage.