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synthpop

Generating Synthetic Versions of Sensitive Microdata for Statistical Disclosure Control

v1.9-2 · Jul 12, 2025 · GPL-2 | GPL-3

Description

A tool for producing synthetic versions of microdata containing confidential information so that they are safe to be released to users for exploratory analysis. The key objective of generating synthetic data is to replace sensitive original values with synthetic ones causing minimal distortion of the statistical information contained in the data set. Variables, which can be categorical or continuous, are synthesised one-by-one using sequential modelling. Replacements are generated by drawing from conditional distributions fitted to the original data using parametric or classification and regression trees models. Data are synthesised via the function syn() which can be largely automated, if default settings are used, or with methods defined by the user. Optional parameters can be used to influence the disclosure risk and the analytical quality of the synthesised data. For a description of the implemented method see Nowok, Raab and Dibben (2016) <doi:10.18637/jss.v074.i11>. Functions to assess identity and attribute disclosure for the original and for the synthetic data are included in the package, and their use is illustrated in a vignette on disclosure (Practical Privacy Metrics for Synthetic Data).

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CRAN Check Status

14 OK
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Flavor Status
r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-clang OK
r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc OK
r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang OK
r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-gcc OK
r-devel-macos-arm64 OK
r-devel-windows-x86_64 OK
r-oldrel-macos-arm64 OK
r-oldrel-macos-x86_64 OK
r-oldrel-windows-x86_64 OK
r-patched-linux-x86_64 OK
r-release-linux-x86_64 OK
r-release-macos-arm64 OK
r-release-macos-x86_64 OK
r-release-windows-x86_64 OK

Check History

OK 14 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE Mar 10, 2026

Reverse Dependencies (3)

Dependency Network

Dependencies Reverse dependencies lattice MASS nnet ggplot2 rpart party foreign plyr proto polspline randomForest ranger classInt mipfp survival +4 more dependencies NHSRdatasets SynthTools miceadds synthpop

Version History

new 1.9-2 Mar 10, 2026
updated 1.9-2 ← 1.9-1.1 diff Jul 12, 2025
updated 1.9-1.1 ← 1.9-1 diff Jun 2, 2025
updated 1.9-1 ← 1.9-0 diff Mar 5, 2025
updated 1.9-0 ← 1.8-0 diff Dec 19, 2024
updated 1.8-0 ← 1.7-0 diff Aug 30, 2022
updated 1.7-0 ← 1.6-0 diff Nov 16, 2021
updated 1.6-0 ← 1.5-1 diff Sep 3, 2020
updated 1.5-1 ← 1.5-0 diff Mar 19, 2019
updated 1.5-0 ← 1.4-4 diff Aug 15, 2018
updated 1.4-4 ← 1.4-3 diff Jun 26, 2018
updated 1.4-3 ← 1.4-1 diff Mar 18, 2018
updated 1.4-1 ← 1.4-0 diff Jan 5, 2018
updated 1.4-0 ← 1.3-2 diff Nov 19, 2017
updated 1.3-2 ← 1.3-1 diff Jul 9, 2017
updated 1.3-1 ← 1.3-0 diff Nov 22, 2016
updated 1.3-0 ← 1.2-1 diff Oct 23, 2016
updated 1.2-1 ← 1.2-0 diff Mar 14, 2016
updated 1.2-0 ← 1.1-1 diff Feb 2, 2016
updated 1.1-1 ← 1.1-0 diff Jul 7, 2015