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Moving questionnaire components across software
package boundaries is much like moving material goods between
countries; at the borders there are delays and hassles as well as
blockages that arise from incompatibilities in export/import rules
in the different jurisdictions.
Open standards promise a better alternative.
Consider just two of the changes that would ensue if research
software providers adhered to a common set of rules independent of
any specific vendor. For research suppliers, all parts of a survey
would pass more flexibly and quickly from one research task to
another without tedious re-programming. Research buyers could choose
suppliers worldwide for a single project on the basis of their
individual merit rather than confining their choices to a common
software package.
How are surveys transferred
now?
Most data collection and tabulation software
packages provide custom interfaces to the software their clients
most commonly use, so that moving information to and from word
processors, spreadsheets, PC statistical packages, databases, etc.
are routine.
However, these current options are inadequate.
Information that is available in one package is often lost in the
transmission to another package; for example, data may be passed
easily but question text and option categories may not be included.
Also, the number of import/export software targets is usually
limited. At the same time, the Canadian research industry is
broadening its scope into new areas and also expanding its umbrella
to include more and different practitioners; this suggests that the
number of interfaces required will expand as well to include their
software.
How would standards work?
Think of standards as a common interface. It
would be the responsibility of software vendors to provide the
translation of their package to and from this common interface. When
each program can translate both into and from the shared format,
then the survey components can move from one program to any other
automatically via this standard format.
Why should software
providers make it easier for their clients to move surveys to
competing software packages?
There are three answers.
First of all, it is time-consuming and
expensive for software companies to develop, support and update
interfaces to other software which, like their own, constantly
changes.
Secondly, with survey research expanding into
new areas, the overall market for research software is growing, and
there is every indication that higher market share will go to the
software which adheres to a standard.
Third, and most important, once current
clients of each software package recognize the value of standards,
they will insist on them.
What are "open" standards?
The major defining characteristic of open
standards is that the specifications on which they are based are
owned by a vendor-neutral organization rather than by software
developers. For example, the World Wide Web Consortium (or the W3C),
the leading standards organization for web-related standards, has
500 corporate and academic members, including legendary rivals Sun
Microsystems and Microsoft. Its goal is to provide "a vendor-neutral
forum for its members to address web-related issues ... to produce
free, interoperable specifications and sample code.
A paper for the Standards Engineering Society
outlined 10 concepts that constitute the principles of open
standards. They include these three provisions: that all
stakeholders may participate in the development process and have
full access to meetings and documents; that agreement is reached
through broad consensus and due process rather than domination; and
that the same standards hold for the same function world-wide.
The universally-accepted definition of open
standards means that no individual software company can legitimately
claim to provide "open standards"; rather they can only support
them. This is an important point because the word "open" is
frequently used in software marketing for a variety of agendas, both
honest attempts to provide commonality and deceptive efforts to
control and monopolize. Open standards cannot, by definition, be
owned by any one vendor.
How are standards
implemented?
Whatever the industry, standards are being
implemented using the same tool, XML. The survey research standards
initiatives are all following this same route, and the common
interfaces described above are being prepared in XML.
XML, which stands for eXtensible Markup
Language, is a way to structure documents. Consider a questionnaire.
XML uses tags to identify questions, option lists, interviewer
instructions, and all the other features specific to surveys. There
is no single set of XML tags that every industry uses, but instead
each industry can create what it needs for its own application. This
is the basis for the word "extensible" in XML.
Extensibility can deliver power, but with it
comes extra complexity and planning. Teamwork becomes important. For
an industry-wide project, you need to work with your counterparts to
share common name tags. This is where industry organizations enter
the picture.
Who is discussing open
standards for surveys?
Discussions about open standards for survey
research are occurring in several locations around the globe. For
market research, the major impetus is coming from England, where
several initiatives are under way. The first is the most developed,
the second is at the feedback stage, and the third is the most
ambitious.
Triple-S
XML (www.triple-s.org)
The Triple-S standard defines "a means of
transferring the key elements of entire surveys between different
survey software packages across various hardware and software
platforms". Although initially presented as a method to exchange
variables as well as data between different tab packages, Triple-S
is now being used to transfer question text and response lists from
CAI packages as well. The meaning of three S's? Apparently the name
originated from the fact that all of the relevant topics started
with s: standardization, surveys, software, systems, simplicity.
The Triple-S group was initially comprised of
key developers from 3 commercial survey software houses; Keith
Hughes (Merlinco), Stephen Jenkins (Mercator) and Geoff Wright
(Pulse Train). More recently, Laurance Garrard (Maritz-TRBI) and Ed
Ross (Open Survey) have joined the group. The first standard was
published in 1994 with later updates including a transition to XML
in Dec. 1999. In March 2001, Triple-S was recognized as a survey
interchange standard by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of
Structure Information Standards), which promotes open XML standards
for all types of software applications.
TabsML
(www.opensurvey.org)
The impetus behind this project is the
recognition that there are many different pieces of software used to
work on tables, and exchanging information between them is often
difficult. TabsML is an XML representation of survey research cross
tabulations so that the information in tables can be absorbed easily
into a variety of mainstream and specialized software packages.
TabsML is a cooperative venture that includes
E-Tabs, DataTree and Open Survey. The TabsML v1.1 specification is
posted on the OpenSurvey web site with a request for comments.
AskML
(www.opensurvey.org)
AskML is an ambitious attempt to make
questionnaires independent of the CAI systems on which they run. It
goes beyond the data descriptions of Triple-S and TabsML to the
actual execution of a CAI (Computer Assisted Interviewing) survey.
It would mean that a single survey instrument could be designed
once, perhaps in an authoring language separate from all commercial
packages, and that instrument could be implemented consistently in
different commercial packages, software versions, languages, and
modes (e.g. web, handheld, CATI).
AskML is a major project of Open Survey, a
non-profit organization founded in 2000 by Ed Ross (founder of
Quantime) and Andrew Jeavons (former president of Surveycraft
Systems Inc.) with Harris Interactive involved as a founding
sponsor. OpenSurvey is a non-profit organization dedicated to the
development, discussion and distribution of open source software and
open standards for survey research.
This is not an exhaustive list of the projects
that are underway. The Object Management Group
(www.omg.org)
is developing a Common Warehouse Metamodel for defining the storage
and handling of data in data warehouses for adoption across the IT
industry; the involvement of Triple-S and Open Survey will hopefully
mean that the CWM will be able to accommodate questionnaire data,
unlike most of the existing data warehouse models. The University of
Michigan's Data Documentation Initiative DDI
(www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI)
is developing tools to make past surveys more readily available for
re-analysis. TADEQ, a Tool for the Analysis and Documentation of
Electronic Questionnaires is a project to make a human-readable
presentation of the CAI questionnaire; it is mainly an initiative of
the statistical agencies of various countries. And there are still
others!
What next?
The development of standards is a huge effort,
undertaken by a group of people who are volunteers. In some cases
their companies help underwrite the time they spend on standards
development, in others it is work done on their own time. Those
involved in the standards process share a passion for their industry
to work and work well. But it takes time, and more assistance is
always needed.
For us here in Canada, awareness of the
standards process is the first step, active involvement is next.
Although the major initiatives are an ocean and several time zones
away, the web provides many ways to get involved in the discussions.
Visit the web sites listed above and learn more about each of the
initiatives. Comment on the current initiatives posted for public
review. Volunteer assistance in devising standards, programming the
standard interfaces, funding projects, or educating the research
community. Plan your next trip to England to coincide with the
conference "Open Standards: Breaking Down the Barriers" being
presented by ASC, the Association for Survey Computing (www.asc.org.uk)
at Imperial College in London on Sept. 19, 2002. And finally, most
important of all, talk to your software providers about where they
stand on open standards.
Nancy Tienhaara is a partner in
DASHcati
Software Ltd. in Victoria BC. |
