Factors that could cause under-linkage of records: |
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• 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 |
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Factors that could cause over-linkage of records: |
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• The probabilistic method, which tolerates a percentage of false positives |
• Insufficient personal identification or duplicate records counted as different cases |
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Factors that could cause either under- or over-estimation: |
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• Data error |
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