{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T18:07:37Z","timestamp":1784052457690,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783987200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"European Union - NextGenerationEU","award":["PNRR - M4C2 - I1.3 - PE00000018 \u2013 CUP J33C22002910001"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PNRR - M4C2 - I1.3 - PE00000018 \u2013 CUP J33C22002910001"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100006318","name":"Universidad Carlos III de Madrid","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2025\/00834\/001"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025\/00834\/001"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100006318","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS One"],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    In this work, we introduce\n                    <jats:monospace>ShinyDataMatcher<\/jats:monospace>\n                    , a user-friendly R Shiny application designed to support the integration of survey data through statistical matching. The tool enables practitioners to import, explore and process survey data, harmonize variables, select appropriate matching variables, and apply a wide range of macro- and micro-level matching methods without writing any code. The application guides the user through the full workflow of a matching exercise, from data preparation to the creation of a synthetic matched dataset, and includes diagnostic tools for assessing matching quality. To illustrate its capabilities, we present an application based on the Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), where the goal is to fuse income and expenditure information and to construct a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). The example also highlights how repeated random hot-deck imputations can be used to account for the additional uncertainty induced by statistical matching. Overall,\n                    <jats:monospace>ShinyDataMatcher<\/jats:monospace>\n                    provides a transparent and accessible environment for exploring, prototyping, and implementing statistical matching procedures, lowering the technical barriers that often limit their use in applied and official-statistics contexts.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0353530","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T17:28:24Z","timestamp":1784050104000},"page":"e0353530","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["ShinyDataMatcher: A user-friendly application for integrating survey data"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4325-8568","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Lucia","family":"Guastadisegni","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Fedele","family":"Greco","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Carlo","family":"Trivisano","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]]},"reference":[{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0353530.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"485","DOI":"10.1177\/002224379703400406","article-title":"Statistical Data Fusion for Cross-Tabulation","volume":"34","author":"WA Kamakura","year":"1997","journal-title":"Journal of Marketing Research"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0353530.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"73","DOI":"10.1509\/jmkr.43.1.73","article-title":"A Direct Approach to Data Fusion","volume":"43","author":"Z Gilula","year":"2006","journal-title":"Journal of Marketing Research"},{"key":"pone.0353530.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1002\/0470023554","volume-title":"Statistical matching: Theory and practice","author":"M D\u2019Orazio","year":"2006"},{"key":"pone.0353530.ref004","volume-title":"Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress","author":"JE Stiglitz","year":"2009"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0353530.ref005","first-page":"50","article-title":"Statistical matching of income and consumption expenditures","volume":"3","author":"G Donatiello","year":"2014","journal-title":"International Journal of Economic Sciences"},{"key":"pone.0353530.ref006","volume-title":"Longitudinal statistical matching: transferring consumption expenditure from hbs to silc panel survey","author":"B U\u00e7ar","year":"2016"},{"key":"pone.0353530.ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Albayrak O, Masterson T. Quality of statistical match of household budget survey and SILC for Turkey. In: Levy Economics Institute, Working Paper, 2017.","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.2924849"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0353530.ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"531","DOI":"10.2478\/jos-2019-0023","article-title":"An integrated database to measure living standards","volume":"35","author":"ED Chiara","year":"2019","journal-title":"Journal of Official Statistics"},{"issue":"2","key":"pone.0353530.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"509","DOI":"10.2478\/jos-2022-0024","article-title":"Data Fusion for Joining Income and Consumtion Information using Different Donor-Recipient Distance Metrics","volume":"38","author":"F Meinfelder","year":"2022","journal-title":"Journal of Official Statistics"},{"key":"pone.0353530.ref010","unstructured":"Coli A, Tartamella F. The link between national accounts and households micro data. In: Meeting of the Siena group on social statistics. 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