A Comprehensive Bayesian Approach to Entity Resolution for Data with Multiple Truths

Abstract

In many applications, from government to ecology, integrating data from diverse and noisy sources is critical for downstream inference. However, a unique identifier to link records cleanly from the same entity may not exist. Entity resolution (also referred to as de-duplication or record linkage) merges such databases to identify duplicates, allowing for more complete data for inference. A multitude of methods from statistics and computer science in recent years assume a single, immutable true value for each variable used in linkage. We argue this restrictive assumption is often violated in practice, leading researchers to discard useful data and biasing downstream inference. For example, a respondent's education status may truly change between two different surveys, yet existing methods would treat at least one observation as a distorted version of the truth, even though both are correct. In this paper, we propose a novel entity resolution model that comprehensively accommodates "multiple truths" by introducing a mixture of exponential family distributions that further handles multiple data types. We provide options to fit the model with Markov chain Monte Carlo routines and variational inference for massive datasets. We demonstrate the method's value via simulation and linking a longitudinal survey of Italian household wealth.

74 pages