BLAISE to DDI

Vipavc Irena , ADP, Slovenia CESSDA - Seminar, 9.-10. September, 2004

BLAISE

Blaise is a powerful computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) system and survey processing tool for the Windows operating system. Developed by Statistics Netherlands and licensed and supported in the United States and Canada by Westat, Blaise includes many advanced capabilities that meet the high demands of today's CAI surveys.

For surveys that are conducted as CAI with programe Blaise we would get questionnaire in electronic format. Because it is structured, it was possible to write programme for transforming it to DDI DTD.

Example of this kind of survey in Slovenia is monthly Politbarometer survey.

Q546A "DENIMO, DA BI ŽE NASLEDNJO NEDELJO PRIŠLO DO REFERENDUMA O ČLANSTVU SLOVENIJE V NATU.

KAKO BI VI GLASOVALI, ZA VSTOP ALI PROTI VSTOPU?@/“:

( O1 "glasoval bi za vstop", O2 "glasoval bi proti vstopu", O3 "ne vem, b.o.");

The structure:Variable name “QUESTION TEXT”: (answer

categories)- instructions for interviewers possible also

A tool to convert questionnaire from Blaise to DDI DTD

is freely available on DDI’s web page athttp://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/users/tools.html

Cameleon and Metadata

NEEDED

- You need program Blaise on your computer. You might also ask depositor to do this transformation for you, since it does not take that much effort.

- From the survey you need files with extensions *.bla (source file) and *.bmi (data model)

- Download Cameleon script (DDI_DTD.cif)

PROCESS I

- Run program Blaise and open source file (*.bla).

- In the menue Tools chose Cameleon.- In data model field open *.bmi file of the survey

and chose downloaded Cameleon script.- Survey-dd.xml is produced and saved.

• <var ID="Vnum140" name="Q546A" files="F1" dcml="0">• <location StartPos="522" EndPos="522" width="1"/>• <labl level="variable">Q546A</labl>• <qstn>• <qstnLit>DENIMO, DA BI ŽE NASLEDNJO NEDELJO PRIŠLO

DO REFERENDUMA O ČLANSTVU SLOVENIJE V NATU. KAKO BI VI GLASOVALI, ZA VSTOP ALI PROTI VSTOPU?

• </qstnLit>• </qstn>• <valrng><range min="1" max="3"/></valrng>• <catgry>• <catValu>1</catValu>• <labl>O1</labl>• <txt>glasoval bi za vstop</txt>• </catgry>• <catgry>

PROCESS II (combining text with frequencies)

- Clean up data file- Clean up produced Variable description (dd) file and

add it to full DDI DTD Codebook - Change entities in full text- Import Data File (SPSS) and Codebook (XML) in

NESSTAR Publisher

For variables that are extra in Variable description part, you will get error massage and they will not be included. Variables that are extra in data file will be included but with description as from data file.

OLD

NEW

New vs Old script

In new version labels of variables and answer categories do not exist. Instead we have Category text in answer categories. Labels are replaced by codes.

NESSTARProblems with:- Entities- Special characters- Reserved characters <, >

Process III

- Publish your Codebook on server.- Export XML document, if you distribute your

Codebooks in some other manner

Cameleon script does:- Give you question text from BLAISE- Answer categories and labels

Cameleon script does not:- write you frequencies (you can solve this with

Nesstar Publisher)- Mark standard missings- Check for jumps- Use standard scales defined in Blaise- Use grouped variables defined in Blaise

Statistics Netherlands is developing a web interviewing system to provide advanced web

features using XML, XSL, and ASP.