What's New with Blaise
Blaise® is a powerful computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) system and survey processing tool for the Windows® operating system and the Internet. Developed by Statistics Netherlands and licensed and supported in North and South America by Westat, Blaise includes many advanced capabilities that meet the high demands of today's CAI surveys:
Blaise is used worldwide. The International Blaise Users Group (IBUG) includes members from Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Peoples Republic of China, Portugal, Republic of Maldives, Serbia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Blaise is scalable to the needs of large-scale surveys and is adaptable and affordable for small research projects. Blaise is used for a variety of research studies conducted by government statistical agencies, academic research, and contract research organizations:
Blaise Internet Services (BlaiseIS) is a scalable, server-based solution for Internet surveys. It is based on Blaise, the leading software package for collecting data for complex surveys.
Blaise NG, the next major release of Blaise, is being developed by Statistics Netherlands with an initial release planned for fall 2010.
Blaise NG will provide significantly improved customization capabilities, better support for mixed-mode surveys, a more integrated approach to survey layout, and a greatly enhanced development environment. Blaise NG will enhance the performance gains of recent versions and increase compatibility with the latest Windows operating systems.
The new development environment will offer an advanced text editor (with features such as syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and bracketing) and a WYSIWYG environment for specifying survey layout. It will take full advantage of industry standards such as XML, Unicode, ADO.NET, and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).
Blaise NG will also maintain as much compatibility as possible with source code and binary files from earlier versions of Blaise. The rules engine in Blaise NG will be an extended version of the rules engine in Blaise 4.x so that the behavior of existing code will not be affected.
Blaise NG developmental priorities are set by Statistics Netherlands in consultation with members of the Blaise Corporate License User Board (BCLUB).
Ongoing information about Blaise NG is available from Statistics Netherlands [*].
Contact Blaise Services at Westat to learn more about Blaise for survey processing needs.
Blaise® is a registered trademark of Statistics Netherlands. Windows® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Statistics Netherlands Blaise Manager Dr. Lon Hofman's webcast "Where Is Blaise Going?" [*] which was presented on March 16, 2009, is now available.
In the webcast, Dr. Hofman discusses the current and planned next generation (NG) Blaise product capabilities and its use worldwide for statistical survey data collection, editing, and processing.
Users having any difficulty accessing the link should contact Blaise@Westat.com.
* Related Internet link - Westat is NOT responsible for the privacy practices or the content on other web sites. (See Westat's Privacy Policy.)
