knitr::opts_chunk$set(collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>") set.seed(1) library(flexsynth) n_pat <- 120 base <- data.frame( id = seq_len(n_pat), age = round(rnorm(n_pat, 60, 10)), sex = sample(c("F", "M"), n_pat, replace = TRUE) ) n_visits <- 1 + rpois(n_pat, 2) # unequal length units rows <- lapply(seq_len(n_pat), function(i) { k <- n_visits[i] sbp <- numeric(k) sbp[1] <- 0.6 * base$age[i] + rnorm(1, 95, 8) for (t in seq_len(k)[-1]) sbp[t] <- 0.8 * sbp[t - 1] + rnorm(1, 26, 6) data.frame(id = base$id[i], visit = seq_len(k), age = base$age[i], sex = base$sex[i], sbp = round(sbp)) }) real <- do.call(rbind, rows) head(real, 8) res <- synth(real, structure = ~ id / visit, seed = 1) res syn <- as.data.frame(res) # unequal-length units are reproduced, not fixed-width table(table(syn$id)) # baseline stays constant within each synthetic patient all(tapply(syn$age, syn$id, function(a) length(unique(a)) == 1)) res_c <- synth( real, ~ id / visit, constraints = list( rule(sbp >= 60 & sbp <= 260), # row scope (default) rule(all(diff(visit) == 1), scope = "unit") # consecutive visits ), seed = 1 ) syn_c <- as.data.frame(res_c) # every synthetic unit's visits are 1, 2, 3, ... all(tapply(syn_c$visit, syn_c$id, function(v) identical(v, seq_along(v)))) diagnose(real, res, vars = c("age", "sex", "sbp"))