BLAISE to DDI

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• BLAISE to DDI
• Vipavc Irena , ADP, Slovenia
  CESSDA - Seminar,
  9.-10. September, 2004

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Q546A "DENIMO, DA BI ŽE NASLEDNJO NEDELJO PRIŠLO
  DO REFERENDUMA O CLANSTVU SLOVENIJE V NATU.
• KAKO BI VI GLASOVALI, ZA VSTOP ALI PROTI
  VSTOPU?_at_/
• ( 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

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• A tool to convert questionnaire from
• Blaise to DDI DTD
• is freely available on DDIs web page at
• http//www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/users/tools.html

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Cameleon and Metadata
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• 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)

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• 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.

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• ltvar ID"Vnum140" name"Q546A" files"F1"
  dcml"0"gt
• ltlocation StartPos"522" EndPos"522"
  width"1"/gt
• ltlabl level"variable"gtQ546Alt/lablgt
• ltqstngt
• ltqstnLitgtDENIMO, DA BI ŽE NASLEDNJO NEDELJO
  PRIŠLO DO REFERENDUMA O CLANSTVU SLOVENIJE V
  NATU. KAKO BI VI GLASOVALI, ZA VSTOP ALI PROTI
  VSTOPU?
• lt/qstnLitgt
• lt/qstngt
• ltvalrnggtltrange min"1" max"3"/gtlt/valrnggt
• ltcatgrygt
• ltcatValugt1lt/catValugt
• ltlablgtO1lt/lablgt
• lttxtgtglasoval bi za vstoplt/txtgt
• lt/catgrygt
• ltcatgrygt

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• 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.

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OLD
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NEW
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• 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.

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• NESSTAR
• Problems with
• Entities
• Special characters
• Reserved characters lt, gt

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• Process III
• Publish your Codebook on server.
• Export XML document, if you distribute your
  Codebooks in some other manner

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

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• 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

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• Statistics Netherlands is developing a web
  interviewing system to provide advanced web
  features using XML, XSL, and ASP.