. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Jun 23.

Published in final edited form as: Ann Appl Stat. 2021 Mar 18;15(1):412–436. doi: 10.1214/20-aoas1397

Table 7. Blocking Sensitivity Analysis Linkage Complexity and Results.

n_A represents the number of unique records in the Medicare data, n_An_B represents the total number of possible record pairs that are partitioned into a gender and ZIP code block, n_m represents the average number of linked records over M = 100 imputations, and run time reflects the approximate time in days our Bayesian record linkage algorithm required to complete 500 iterations using a single CPU core on a Linux system.

Blocking Criteria	n_A	n_An_B	${\bar{n}}_{m}$	95% CI	Run time
4 digit ZIP	251,285	56,706,359	3829.67	(3814.40, 3844.94)	30 days
5 digit ZIP	247,724	13,786,172	3608.02	(3570.91, 3645.14)	18 days
6 digit ZIP	234,331	2,666,450	2807.21	(2728.63, 2885.79)	2 days
7 digit ZIP	144,230	436,049	2767.80	(2543.67, 2991.93)	< 1 day