Matching is the method of making a study group and a comparison group comparable with respect to the extraneous factors. Generally used in the retrospective studies when selecting cases and controls to control variation in a response variable due to sources other than those which are taken immediately under investigation. Numerous kinds of matching can be recognized, the most common of which is when each case is individually matched with the control subject on the matching variables, for instance sex, age, occupation, etc. When the variable on which the matching takes place is continuous it is generally transformed into a series of categories (such as age), but the second process is to say that two values of the variable match if their difference lies between the defined limits.

This technique is known as caliper matching. Also significant is group matching in which distributions of the extraneous factors are made similar in the groups to be compared.