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Identifying a National Death Index Match
American Journal of Epidemiology, 07/01/09

Fillenbaum GG et al. - Although NDI deems some matches as perfect, multiple candidate matches may be available for other cases. Working across data from the Duke University site of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE), NDI, and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), the authors found that, for this Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly cohort of 1,896 cases born before 1922 and alive as of January 1, 1999, a match on Social Security number plus additional personal information (specific combinations of last name, first name, month of birth, day of birth) resulted in agreement between NDI and Social Security Death Index dates of death 94.7% of the time, while comparable agreement was found for only 12.3% of candidate decedents who did not have the required combination of information. Thus, an easy to apply algorithm facilitates accurate identification of NDI matches.

Exclusive Author Commentary
Gerda G. Fillenbaum, 07/01/09

Sometimes, simple approaches work well. We hope that this straightforward approach to matching will make it easier for investigators with limited resources to look at issues related to mortality in large datasets.

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