TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2001//
TI  - Probabilistic linkage of police and emergency department sources of information on motor-vehicle injury cases: A proposal for improvement
JO  - Crash prevention and injury control
A1  - Cirera, E.
A1  - Plasencia, A.
A1  - Ferrando, Josep
A1  - Arribas, P.
SP  - 229
EP  - 238
VL  - 2
IS  - 3
N2  - The availability of complete data on traffic injury cases including both the crash circumstances as well as health outcomes is a key tool to tailor appropriate motor-vehicle injury prevention policies at local and regional levels. This paper explores the feasibility of the probabilistic linkage of police and hospital emergency department data regarding motor vehicle cases in Barcelona (Spain), including the use of methodologies to optimize the linkage process. A probabilistic linkage process was performed using local police reports (n=12,481) as well as hospital emergency department data (n=16,733) from all traffic injury cases occurring in 1997. Common variables used in both files were: age, sex, position, vehicle, hospital, date of crash, and postal code of place of residence. In all linked pairs at least 1 variable coincided, in almost 2 of every 3 pairs at least 5 of the 7 variables coincided, and in 7.3% of the cases all variables coincided.<p />
LA  - 
SN  - 1028-6586
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -