Prototyping touchscreen Blaise applications

Abstract

The integration of new technology in survey research has led to new developments in computer-assisted interviewing applications. Touchscreen functionality can improve usability and, potentially, improve data quality and reduce interviewing costs by providing a more user-friendly, straightforward means of navigating through a data collection instrument. With several large scale in-person data collection screening studies on the horizon, and the plans to purchase new hardware, we have explored existing touchscreen capabilities within Blaise 4.8. In this paper, we will describe several touchscreen Blaise application prototypes that we are considering to use on studies conducted by Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Building on the work done by Hofman and colleagues in 2013, we have furthered the development of touchscreen applications in Blaise 4.8 by focusing on developing touchscreen screening applications, Audio Computer-Assisted Self-Interviews (ACASI) and, potentially, the collection of physical measures and biomarkers in Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) Examples of presenting context specific
information, keyboards and numeric keypads will be provided as well as a brief discussion of our hardware review process and selection with touchscreen in mind. Currently, our preliminary research and prototyping suggests that we can accomplish what we need using Blaise 4.8. However, we hope to be able to explore similar and applicable features as they exist within Blaise 5 and build some initial Blaise 5 prototypes. Ultimately, we will aim to determine which version of Blaise allows us to leverage more of the desired touchscreen features.