Choosing between One-to-One Merging and Match-Merging

Comparing Match-Merge Methods

Use one-to-one merging when you want to combine one observation from each data set, but it is not important to match observations. For example, when merging an observation that contains a student's name, year, and major with an observation that contains a date, time, and location for a conference, it does not matter which student gets which time slot. Therefore, a one-to-one merge is appropriate.
In cases where you must merge certain observations, use a match-merge. For example, when merging employee information from two different data sets, it is crucial that you merge observations that relate to the same employee. Therefore, you must use a match-merge.

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