Family structure created, and family number assigned.
When the manual review was completed, all record pairs
and accompanying weights were loaded into Microsoft
Access. Duplicate record pairs, those with weights below
the lower threshold and those that the manual review determined
were nonmatches were eliminated. The remaining
unique record pairs made up the match database. A
Java program was written to create a family structure and
assign a family number. This program compared each record
pair to the others in the match database. A record in
any pair that was also in the fi rst pair was added to the
family of the fi rst pair and assigned the same family number.
The process was repeated until all records in the fi le
had been allocated to a family. The result was a list of birth
record identifi cation numbers and an associated family
number for families with more than one birth. Families
with a single birth were assigned family numbers sequentially.
This fi le was merged with the master birth fi le, using
the birth record identifi cation number as the unique
identifi er.