read.obs

Imports data data sets form external files into a data frame. 
Currently supported files include: sav (SPSS), dta (Stata), xpt (SAS),
csv (comma-separated file), tab (tab-delimited file) and 
txt (delimited text files). For SPSS, Stata and SAS it uses functions from 
the <code>foreign</code> package with some adjustments where necessary.

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).

Beata Nowok

synthpop

Generating Synthetic Versions of Sensitive Microdata for
Statistical Disclosure Control

Chris Dibben

Joshua Snoke

Caspar van Lissa

Lotte Pater

read.obs function

<dl> <dt>file</dt>
<dd>the name of the file (including extension) which the data are 
 to be read from.</dd> <dt>convert.factors</dt>
<dd>a logical value indicating whether variables with 
 value labels in Stata and SPSS should be converted into R factors with 
 those levels.</dd> <dt>lab.factors</dt>
<dd>a logical value indicating whether variables with 
 complete value labels but imported using their numeric codes 
 (<code>convert.factors = FALSE</code>) should be converted 
 from numeric to factor variables.</dd> <dt>export.lab</dt>
<dd>a logical variable indicating whether labels from SPSS or 
 Stata should be exported to an external file.</dd> <dt>...</dt>
<dd>additional parameters passed to read functions.</dd></dl>

Arguments

Importing original data sets form external files — read.obs

<dl>

 <dt>file</dt>
<dd>the name of the file (including extension) which the data are 
 to be read from.</dd>

 <dt>convert.factors</dt>
<dd>a logical value indicating whether variables with 
 value labels in Stata and SPSS should be converted into R factors with 
 those levels.</dd>

 <dt>lab.factors</dt>
<dd>a logical value indicating whether variables with 
 complete value labels but imported using their numeric codes 
 (<code>convert.factors = FALSE</code>) should be converted 
 from numeric to factor variables.</dd>

 <dt>export.lab</dt>
<dd>a logical variable indicating whether labels from SPSS or 
 Stata should be exported to an external file.</dd>

 <dt>...</dt>
<dd>additional parameters passed to read functions.</dd>

</dl>

read.obs: Importing original data sets form external files

Description

Usage

Value

Arguments

See Also