Evaluation of reproductive histories constructed by linking vital records

We used 1.4 million fetal death and birth certificates filed in Georgia between 1980 and 1992 to construct 369686 chains of two or more reproductive events occurring to the same woman. We evaluated these chains using both information on the certificates and information independently collected in interviews with 1311 women. Overall, 86.6% of the chains had the expected number of events, based on the certificate's information about previous pregnancies. Seventy-nine per cent of the chains had the expected number of events based on the maternal interviews. Consistency between the observed number of events in the chain and the number expected, based either on data from the certificates or from the maternal interviews, was greatest for chains with two or three events. Mothers born in Georgia were more likely to have complete chains than mothers born elsewhere. Among the 551391 non-linked certificates, 48.7% were the mother's first birth, 40.2% were second or higher-order births to women whose previous pregnancy occurred before 1980, and 11.1% were second or higher-order births to women whose previous pregnancy occurred after 1980. Fetal death and livebirth certificates can be linked to construct pregnancy histories with reasonably low levels of underlinkage and overlinkage.