Beyond Record Linkage: Longitudinal Analysis of Turn-of-the-century Interurban Swedish Migrants

Abstract

Much attention among computer-using historians has been focused on the intricacies of record linkage, with the aim of constructing life histories for selected population groups. Partly because efforts have been concentrated on linkage procedures, less work has been done on the development of methods for analyzing the resulting longitudinal data sets. This article presents methodological aspects of our work with a migration study based on longitudinal records from two Swedish historical databases. The quality and organization of the databases make record linkage much easier than is true of most cross-sectional population censuses. Thus, after briefly presenting record linkage procedures, we have chosen to focus instead on the issues raised by the ensuing analysis of the datasets. Of special interest from a computer user's standpoint, is the employment of the Open Data Base Connection (ODBC interface, allowing the statistical programs to read data directly from a relational data base. Also of interest, especially from an historian's perspective, is the set of procedures developed to analyze different types of life-course events.