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Synthetic Data and Significance Tests: Why t-tests are Inappropriate and What to Do Instead

Ray Poynter, 19 June 2025 The statistical trap hiding in synthetic respondentsDiscussions about synthetic data are everywhere. Talking about bolstering hard-to-reach quotas, creating digital twins and replacing whole sections of fieldwork. By design, these records replicate the distributions of your original survey, meaning every synthetic element looks plausible. The problem is that this process duplicates… Read More »Synthetic Data and Significance Tests: Why t-tests are Inappropriate and What to Do Instead