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Synthesizing Tabular Microdata with Gaussian Copulas: The rsdv R Package

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  • Venkitasubramanian, Kailas

    (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)

Abstract

Administrative records, survey microdata, and clinical research data carry identifying detail that data-governance procedures restrict from open release. Synthetic data — artificial rows that preserve the distributional structure of a real dataset without releasing any single observation — is now widely used as a substitute when the underlying records cannot be shared. The R ecosystem has had good options for parts of this workflow, but no native implementation of the copula-based joint-modelling design that the Python Synthetic Data Vault (SDV) library popularised. The `rsdv` package fills that gap: it fits a Gaussian copula jointly over numerical, categorical, and boolean columns, supports conditional sampling and declarative row-level constraints, and ships three evaluation reports (quality, structural validity, and privacy) modelled on SDMetrics' two-property hierarchy. I describe the package's design, benchmark it against the most widely used R alternatives (`synthpop` and `arf`) on the UCI Adult Income data, report quality scores as a function of training-set size, and quantify attribute-disclosure risk across four threat models. `synthpop` produces the highest marginal fidelity on this dataset; `arf` is fast and competitive; `rsdv` is comparable to `synthpop` on privacy and uniquely brings the SDV-style integrated reporting pipeline to R. The package is on CRAN, has 200+ tests, three vignettes, and a reproducible replication archive accompanies this paper.

Suggested Citation

  • Venkitasubramanian, Kailas, 2026. "Synthesizing Tabular Microdata with Gaussian Copulas: The rsdv R Package," SocArXiv t6cne_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:t6cne_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/t6cne_v1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nowok, Beata & Raab, Gillian M. & Dibben, Chris, 2016. "synthpop: Bespoke Creation of Synthetic Data in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 74(i11).
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