CRAN requires the check problems on this package to be fixed before 2026-08-02 or it will be archived.

synthpop

1.9-2

Generating Synthetic Versions of Sensitive Microdata for Statistical Disclosure Control

7packages depend

45.4Kdownloads / year

–test coverage

8/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Beata NowokFirst published 2014-08-1821 releasesCRAN page ↗

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).

Install

R (CRAN)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("synthpop", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-synthpop

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-synthpop

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-synthpop

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

5NOTE8OK

Failing flavors

NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-clang
NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc
NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang
NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-gcc
NOTE r-devel-windows-x86_64

Slowest check: 7.7 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Code health

None

Tests · ratio 0.00

not tracked

Coverage

100%

Documentation · exports

Dependencies · direct

Check history

NOTE2026-07-11
11 OK · 2 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-06-09
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
ERROR2026-06-07
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 1 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-03-10
14 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMENoVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 33% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 96%
Documented parameters: 96%
Return-value docs: 100%
References docs: 48%

Downloads

45.4K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,150 · ~124/day · ~3.8K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

2K30 days

11.1K90 days

45.4K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on194 r2u30 autocran1.8K conda_forge95 c2d4u

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

13 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (0)

none

Imports (23)

latticeMASSmethodsnnetggplot2graphicsstatsutilsrpartpartyforeignplyr proto polspline randomForest ranger classInt mipfpsurvivalstringr rmutil broman forcats

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (0)

none

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

7direct

0indirect

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (6)

Maintainer (1)

Beata Nowok

Author, Maintainer

Authors (2)

Beata Nowok

Author, Maintainer

Gillian M Raab

Author

Contributors (4)

Chris Dibben

Contributor · added in 1.1-0

Lotte Pater

Contributor · added in 1.9-0

Joshua Snoke

Contributor · added in 1.1-1

Caspar van Lissa

Contributor · added in 1.6-0

Listed in earlier versions (2)

Chris Dibben (first two authors in alphabetical order)

no longer listed · 1.0-0

Raab

no longer listed · 1.9-0 to 1.9-2

Package Timeline

21 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.9-2Latest
2025-07-13 · current release · diff ↗
1.9-1.1
2025-06-03 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.9-1
2025-03-06 · diff ↗
1.9-0
2024-12-20 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.8-0
2022-08-31 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.7-0
2021-11-17 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.6-0
2020-09-04 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.5-1
2019-03-20 · diff ↗

Show 18 earlier events

1.5-0
2018-08-16 · diff ↗
1.4-4
2018-06-27 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.4-3
2018-03-19 · diff ↗
1.4-1
2018-01-06 · diff ↗
1.4-0
2017-11-20 · diff ↗
1.3-2
2017-07-10 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.3-1
2016-11-23 · diff ↗
1.3-0
2016-10-24 · diff ↗
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
1.2-1
2016-03-15 · diff ↗
1.2-0
2016-02-03 · diff ↗
1.1-1
2015-07-08 · diff ↗
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
1.1-0
2015-02-21 · diff ↗
1.0-0
2014-08-18
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10

Package metadata

First published: 2014-08-18
Total releases: 21 / 12 yrs
License: GPL-2 | GPL-3 OSI
Bundled data: 121 KB / 1 file
Download size: 1.6 MB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

Official Statistics & Survey Statistics

Report a problem with this page →