Table 3.

Factors affecting linking accuracy

Factors that could cause under-linkage of records:

•  The deterministic method, which adheres to stringent matching criteria

•  Incompleteness of the targeted agency databases

•  Missing information in both the CalTOP file and the targeted databases

•  Lag time between events and reports

Factors that could cause over-linkage of records:

•  The probabilistic method, which tolerates a percentage of false positives

•  Insufficient personal identification or duplicate records counted as different cases

Factors that could cause either under- or over-estimation:

•  Data error