Summary

The problem of reconciling possibly conflicting information as described in the module “Micro-Fusion – Reconciling Conflicting Microdata” can be treated by an optimisation approach. In this approach, the values in the record with inconsistent microdata are changed, as little as possible, such that the modified record with microdata is consistent in the sense that it satisfies all edit rules. Formally then, the minimum adjustment method can be described as minimising a chosen distance between the original (inconsistent) record and the adjusted record, subject to the constraint that all edit rules are satisfied by the adjusted record. By specifying different distance functions, the minimum adjustment approach leads to different methods. For three common and, for the adjustment problem plausible, distance functions the corresponding adjustment methods will be described in this module and their differences will be illustrated by a numerical example.

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