Re: W3C electronic survey standard draft?

I think the post is perfectly on topic.

There are numerous attempts at writing a standardized surveying format. 
Some even in XML. For example, see

http://www.imsglobal.org/question/index.cfm
http://www.triple-s.org/index.htm

My analysis of the format problem is this: The (available) standardized 
formats will never reach any wide-spread use since there is no good 
implementation of them. The non-standardized formats that actually are in 
use (for example Mod_Survey) won't be accepted as standards since they are 
too implementation-specific.

It'd be different if some large actor such as W3C, ISO or even the Apache 
foundation would take an initiative in the question.

It is an amusing thought to make mod_survey's format a W3C standard 
though. I have no idea what that would involve in practise.

Perhaps a start would be discussing how Mod_Survey's format should be 
adapted or extended to be possible to use in other implementations? I've 
been thinking about running stand-alone programs in GTK or win32 with 
surveys. Or applets reading survey files. However, most of the 
layout-related parameters are very html-specific.

   // Joel


On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Niklas Deutschmann wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I just had the idea that it would be nice if there were a
> W3C-standardized format for the description of surveys that
> meets the high requirements of empiric social research.
> XForms and InfoPath are some attempts in this direction,
> but they don't aim at real social research.
> Maybe we could even go to the W3C and suggest the
> mod_survey document format :-)
>
> I also found this here...
> http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/rsm/tadeq/
>
> This format would have to include:
> - Very precise information about every single question
> (datatype, items and item values, missing value, answer
> validation, if the question is required etc.)
> - Information about the structure of the survey (which
> questions will be logically grouped etc.)
> - Filters / Routing.
> - The visualisation of questions (UI element type, physical
> formatting)
> and so on...
>
> Does anybody know any attempts for this?
>
> I hope this post is not too off-topic, but I think
> standards are moving things forward.
>
> /Niklas
>
>
>
>
> Skickat av "Niklas Deutschmann" <[email protected]>
> till survey-discussion
>
Skickat av Joel Palmius <[email protected]>
till survey-discussion