Exporting synthetic data sets to external files

Exports synthetic data set(s) from synthesised data set (synds) object to external files of selected format. Currently supported file formats include: SPSS, Stata, SAS, csv, tab, rda, RData and txt. For SPSS, Stata and SAS it uses functions from the foreign package with some adjustments where necessary. Information about the synthesis is written into a separate text file.

NOTE: Currently numeric codes and labels can be preserved correctly only for SPSS files imported into R using read.obs function.

Usage

write.syn(object, filename,
filetype = c("SPSS", "Stata", "SAS", "csv", "tab", "rda", "RData", "txt"),
convert.factors = "numeric", data.labels = NULL, save.complete = TRUE,
extended.info = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

object

an object of class synds, which stands for 'synthesised data set'. It is typically created by function syn and it includes object$m synthesised data set(s).

filename

the name of the file (excluding extension) which the synthetic data are to be written into. For multiple synthetic data sets it will be used as a prefix folowed respectively by _1, _..., _m.

filetype

a desired format of the output files.

convert.factors

a single string indicating how to handle factors in Stata output files. The default value is set to "numeric" in order to preserve the numeric codes from the original data. See write.dta for other possible values.

data.labels

a list with variable labels and value labels.

save.complete

a logical value indicating whether a complete 'synthesised data set' (synds) object should be saved into a file (synobject_filename.RData).

extended.info

a logical value indicating whether extended information should be saved into an information file.

...

additional parameters passed to write functions.

Value

File(s) with synthesised data set(s) and a text file with information about synthesis are produced. Optionally a complete synthesised data set object is saved into synobject_filename.RData file.

See also

read.obs