BLAISE to DDI Vipavc Irena, ADP, Slovenia CESSDA - Seminar, 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 ( 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 at

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.

Q546A DENIMO, DA BI ŽE NASLEDNJO NEDELJO PRIŠLO DO REFERENDUMA O ČLANSTVU SLOVENIJE V NATU. KAKO BI VI GLASOVALI, ZA VSTOP ALI PROTI VSTOPU? 1 O1 glasoval bi za vstop

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.

NESSTAR Problems 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.