Establishment of a record linkage center

• Applicants: Stefan Bender; Professor Dr. Rainer Schnell
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2011 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 187664861

The project¿s objective is to continue and consolidate the work of the German Record Linkage Center (G-RLC). As an infrastructure facility open to all disciplines, the G-RLC aims at increasing the number and quality of record linkage applications in all research fields, thereby opening up new data sources for scientific research and acting as a competent contact for researchers in Germany and abroad. The G-RLC continues to be a central advisor on technical and procedural aspects of data protection and data security regarding linked microdata. It adds to the present supra-regional information infrastructure composed of data service and research data centers as well as decen-tralized data holders. In the second funding period, the services offered by the G-RLC will be consolidated and im-proved. The G-RLC currently offers counseling and training on methodology and issues of data security, the execution of linkage processes on behalf of clients, and the provision of an online in-formation portal. Moreover, we aim at developing a data hosting model that will permit provision of data sets linked by the G-RLC to external researchers in accordance with data all protection requirements. The quality assessment and validation of linked data will also be further strengthened. This will help us to improve the Center¿s services and will lead to an increased quality of the result-ing data sets in the long run. In order to foster high-quality linkage projects, reference data sets are needed that comprise standardized forms of varying spellings of names and addresses idiosyncratic to the German lan-guage. To this end, we will develop innovative methods for the preprocessing of identifiers that are specific to German peculiarities. To establish linkage techniques apt to data protection requirements in Germany, further modifications and certifications are necessary regarding the linkage of very large data sets and for dealing with missing identifiers are. Those results should directly trans-late into improved services. Other important tasks include the advancement and porting of record linkage software, knowledge transfer, and the crucial recruitment of junior researchers. After the conclusion of the second funding period, the G-RLC will be established as an institution both visible on the national and international level and self-sufficient by third-party funding and a charging scheme. The G-RLC ¿ with its methodological and service program ¿ will represent a German institution that is able to set international standards and to take a pioneering role in sever-al fields.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)