starling: Record Linkage for Public Health Surveillance
Record linkage for public health surveillance datasets using either the Fellegi-Sunter probabilistic framework (via reclin2) or deterministic exact-key matching. Provides pre-linkage data quality auditing (preflight()), Medicare number checksum validation (check_medicare()), blocking variable construction (flock()), and the murmuration() linkage engine. murmuration() expresses linkage as a single cohort-to-event concept (linking a linelist of people to a dated stream of vaccination, hospitalisation, or case events within a before/during/after time window), with the historical four-code taxonomy (case-to-hospitalisation, vaccination-to-case, vaccination-to-hospitalisation, vaccination-to-event) retained as deprecated aliases. Also provides linkage weight distribution visualisation (murmuration_plot()) and threshold sensitivity analysis (perch()) with annotated AIHW, WA Data Linkage Unit, and PHRN reference benchmarks. perch() can be called standalone or triggered automatically mid-linkage via murmuration(perch_before_linking = TRUE). Includes synthetic datasets (cases_notifiable, vax_air) and three vignettes demonstrating the complete linkage workflow. Part of the aviary public health surveillance ecosystem.
| Version: | 1.1.0 |
| Depends: | R (≥ 4.1) |
| Imports: | reclin2, dplyr, stringr, lubridate, rlang, ggplot2 |
| Suggests: | patchwork, plotly, phonics, mudnester, testthat (≥ 3.0.0), knitr, rmarkdown |
| Published: | 2026-07-10 |
| DOI: | 10.32614/CRAN.package.starling |
| Author: | Nicolas Smoll 
[aut, cre] |
| Maintainer: | Nicolas Smoll <nicolas.smoll at health.qld.gov.au> |
| BugReports: | https://github.com/nrsmoll/starling/issues |
| License: | MIT + file LICENSE |
| URL: | https://github.com/nrsmoll/starling |
| NeedsCompilation: | no |
| CRAN checks: | starling results |
Documentation:
| Reference manual: | starling.html , starling.pdf |
| Vignettes: |
Linked Cohort Analysis (source, R code) Pre-Linkage Data Quality (source, R code) Threshold Selection with perch() (source, R code) |
Downloads:
| Package source: | starling_1.1.0.tar.gz |
| Windows binaries: | r-devel: starling_1.1.0.zip, r-release: starling_1.1.0.zip, r-oldrel: starling_1.1.0.zip |
| macOS binaries: | r-release (arm64): starling_1.1.0.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): starling_1.1.0.tgz, r-release (x86_64): starling_1.1.0.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): starling_1.1.0.tgz |
| Old sources: | starling archive |
Linking:
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