The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911

This paper presents the results of a project creating a linked dataset of census and civil registration records from the county of Derbyshire, England. The proposed method includes women at every stage, first by comparing the performance of deterministic, probabilistic, and household-based linking...

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Main Author: Emma Diduch
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: International Instititute of Social History 2024-11-01
Series:Historical Life Course Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hlcs.nl/article/view/19189
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author Emma Diduch
author_facet Emma Diduch
author_sort Emma Diduch
collection DOAJ
description This paper presents the results of a project creating a linked dataset of census and civil registration records from the county of Derbyshire, England. The proposed method includes women at every stage, first by comparing the performance of deterministic, probabilistic, and household-based linking methods and then expanding the linking process to capture women who have changed names between censuses due to marriage. In census-to-census linking the best results are obtained through a combination of probabilistic and household-based methods, linking between 40% and 45% of the starting population in each decade 1881–1911. The quality of these links and possible impacts of migration patterns are discussed with reference to the representativeness of the linked sample. Incorporating transcribed indexes of marriages (which are freely available online) allows women to be followed in the census across their marriages. Combined, this process reduces the gap in linking success between women and men and especially improves match rates for women in their twenties by between fifteen and twenty percentage points. These data have important potential for future record linking efforts and for research exploring women's work, marriage, and fertility in a life course perspective.
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spelling doaj-art-8b09a60e1cab45bdbc163499ab5e262c2024-11-11T12:43:26ZengInternational Instititute of Social HistoryHistorical Life Course Studies2352-63432024-11-011410.51964/hlcs19189The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911Emma Diduch0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5166-8735University of Cambridge This paper presents the results of a project creating a linked dataset of census and civil registration records from the county of Derbyshire, England. The proposed method includes women at every stage, first by comparing the performance of deterministic, probabilistic, and household-based linking methods and then expanding the linking process to capture women who have changed names between censuses due to marriage. In census-to-census linking the best results are obtained through a combination of probabilistic and household-based methods, linking between 40% and 45% of the starting population in each decade 1881–1911. The quality of these links and possible impacts of migration patterns are discussed with reference to the representativeness of the linked sample. Incorporating transcribed indexes of marriages (which are freely available online) allows women to be followed in the census across their marriages. Combined, this process reduces the gap in linking success between women and men and especially improves match rates for women in their twenties by between fifteen and twenty percentage points. These data have important potential for future record linking efforts and for research exploring women's work, marriage, and fertility in a life course perspective. https://hlcs.nl/article/view/19189Record linkageMarriageFertilityCensus dataCivil registrationEngland and Wales
spellingShingle Emma Diduch
The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
Historical Life Course Studies
Record linkage
Marriage
Fertility
Census data
Civil registration
England and Wales
title The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
title_full The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
title_fullStr The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
title_full_unstemmed The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
title_short The Record Linking Glass Ceiling. Applying Automated Methods to the Census and Women’s Marriage Records, 1881–1911
title_sort record linking glass ceiling applying automated methods to the census and women s marriage records 1881 1911
topic Record linkage
Marriage
Fertility
Census data
Civil registration
England and Wales
url https://hlcs.nl/article/view/19189
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AT emmadiduch recordlinkingglassceilingapplyingautomatedmethodstothecensusandwomensmarriagerecords18811911