Archive News Summary
September 2013
The list of Triple-S implementers continues to grow with a new addition from French company Market Audit.
May 2013
Support Our Standard
The Triple-S Group would like to thank Askia and CfMC for becoming a Triple-S Sponsors for 2013 / 2014.
March 2013
Support Our Standard
The Triple-S Group would like to thank Data Liberation for becoming a Triple-S Sponsor for 2013 / 2014.
January 2013
Support Our Standard
The Triple-S Group would like to invite all supporters and implementers of Triple-S to help with funding of new initiatives and the Triple-S Validator.
June 2012
The list of Triple-S implementers continues to grow with a new addition from French company Soft Concept.
October 2011
Triple-S: What Now?
The papers presented at the Triple-S Conference held at on Wednesday 21st September 2011 are now available to download.
There are three new implementations of Triple-S this month.
August 2011
Triple-S: What Now?
The Triple-S Group is pleased to announce that the Triple-S Conference will take place on Wednesday 21st September 2011 at Wills Hall, Bristol University, UK.
February 2011
Due to user request the SPSS to Triple-S conversion program has been updated to include a new message that appears when the program has finished, telling the user if any variables of type SINGLE have been found containing a value code of 0 (zero). The list of Triple-S implementers continues to grow with a new addition from Canadian company Destiny Software Productions.
May 2010
A Linux version of the Quantum to Triple-S converter now available free to download.
The list of Triple-S implementers has been updated with two new additions from German company 2×4 Ltd and Brazilian company Preferencial em tabulaçãoand.
April 2010
The Triple-S Validation Service is now complete and available free.
February 2010
The three founder members of the Triple-S Group, Keith Hughes, Steve Jenkins and Geoff Wright have been elected as Lifetime Honorary Members of the Association for Survey Computing, ASC Lifetime Honorary Membership is awarded to a person or organisation considered to have made a significant contribution to the work of ASC or to the promotion of its principal objectives.
For more information about the ASC and forthcoming events see http://www.asc.org.uk
Two new Triple-S registrations from US company Circle Systems Inc and Danish company TricTrac join the list this month.
September 2009
The list of Triple-S registrations continues to grow with new listings from Office Reports, MarketSight LLC and C-Metriks this month.
July 2009
An updated version of the SPSS to Triple-S conversion program is now available.
June 2008
Further to the February announcement of funding from MR companies to produce a Triple-S validation program, the Triple-S Group is pleased to report that a supplier has been chosen and the writing of the program is now underway. The Triple-S Group would like to thank sponsors, GfK NOP, Ipsos Uk Ltd, Milward Brown, Synovate and TNS.
The list of Triple-S implementers continues to grow with two new additions from CSA and Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC.
May 2008
The list of Triple-S implementers continues to grow with two new additions from Braun Research Inc and ipsos Observer.
April 2008
The list of Triple-S implementers has been updated with four new additions from ADN, Market-Info-Service, SPSS and Square Systems. There are also updates from Confirmit and MI Pro.
March 2008
Further to the February announcement of funding to produce a Triple-S validation program, The Triple-S Group is pleased to report that an encouraging number of proposals has been received. The Triple-S Group is expecting to make a decision by the end of March.
February 2008
The Triple-S Group has received funding from MR companies to produce a program that will “validate” triple-s export files. We are looking for proposals from interested software developers by the end of February.
January 2008
Triple-S, the only XML standard for survey interchange, has been awarded a prestigious Special Technology Award by the Market Research Society and Association for Survey Computing. The award was presented to the Triple-S Group in recognition of the outstanding contribution that Triple-S has made to the research profession Triple-S was the first independent standard for market research data when it was created in 1993. Today, it is in constant everyday use around the globe and is now incorporated in over 60 software applications. In its lifetime, it is estimated to have saved research companies and their clients many millions of pounds. The group’s three founder members, Keith Hughes, Steve Jenkins and Geoff Wright, remain involved to this day, alongside the group’s other two members, Laurance Gerrard and Ed Ross. For further details of the award see http://www.mrs.org.uk/awards/dinner/asc_special.htm
The Triple-S Group is pleased to announce that it has recently been offered funding by a number of leading Market Research companies. The donations from GfK, TNS, Kantar, Synovate, and IPSOS Mori will be used to fund development of a Validation Suite for Triple-S XML. We would like to thank those organisations for their very generous support and for their continued interest in the ongoing development of the Triple-S standard.
November 2007
There are two new implementers of Triple-S this month.
June 2007
The list of Triple-S implementers reaches 56 this month with four new additions. Nielsen NRG, Forall Systems, Inc, SurveyShack.com Ltd and 3BI Consulting join the ever growing list.
April 2007
The Challenges of a Changing World:
ASC 5th International Conference
12-14 September 2007, Southampton, UK
The ASC is pleased to announce the programme for its 5th international conference which takes place on 12-14 September 2007 in Southampton, UK. The programme consists of 45 papers by eminent practitioners in survey computing. The ASC is delighted to have Mick Couper, Karen Dunnell, Denise Lievesley and Malcolm Rigg as keynote speakers. There will also be a paper from the triple-s group.
There is an early bird booking discount available until 30 April, after which delegate fees increase to full price.
Full details of the conference, including the complete programme of papers and social events is available at http://www.asc.org.uk/conference
December 2006
The Challenges of a Changing World: Developments in the Survey Process – Call for papers
The ASC’s 5th International Conference on Survey and Statistical Computing is taking place from the 12th – 14th September 2007 at the University of Southampton.
Survey and statistical software is not only evolving in response to the challenges of a more complex world, but is increasingly an agent of change, providing new opportunities for research and driving innovation in survey-based practices.
ASC aims to capture the essence of these developments and promote knowledge and understanding in this sphere by seeking imaginative proposals for papers. All of the papers, which will be subject to peer review, will be published in the Conference Proceedings in book form.
For more information about this event please visit www.asc.org.uk
October 2006
UK company New Mind, an award winning new-media consultancy, joins the list of Triple-S implementations this month. To view the full updated list or to register your implementation click here
June 2006
U.S. Company Cunningham Research Group and Czech Republic Company ICNET join the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
May 2006
The Triple-S Group is pleased to announce that the full documentation for Triple-S XML Version 2.0 is now available. New features have been implemented as a result of discussions within the Triple-S Group and in consultation with users.
February 2006
The list of Triple-S implementers reaches 49 this month with the addition of Embrace Mobile, Provalis Research and Global Bay Mobile Technologies.
October 2005
French company B3TSI joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
July 2005
Triple-S Web site IQT usage report
Simpson Carpenter Ltd wanted to drive up the quality of fieldwork provided to them by the M.R. industry and provide reassurance to their clients that the quality of their interviews is maximised. This was the Rationale for developing the Interviewer Quality Testing Software:
Alan Kilcline from Simpson Carpenter worked closely with the developer Mike Trotman fromDatalucid to help define the software requirements and end user interface for ease of use. The result was I.Q.T. – Interviewer Quality Testing software.
IQT can be run on all interviewer-administered surveys – telephone & face-to-face
IQT provides metrics on the quality of each interviewer’s interview. It identifies the extent to which their survey answers differ to those of other interviewers tracks the extent to which their route through the survey differs to that of other interviewers provides high level summary of results with ability to drill-down into more specific interviewer patterns if necessary allows for ‘suspect’ or unusual patterns of responses to be explored further provides focused guidance for back-checking Simplicity of use was an important criterion so the software utilises a web-based interface.
Another impressive feature of the software is the automatic classification of data types when using the data importation module.
Data is imported into the software using Triple-S standard data files and classified into the appropriate data types e.g. mutli-coded, single response etc.
This process is automatic and saves the user from the potentially time consuming process of having to ‘describe’ the data to the program.
Another company joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
June 2005
The Triple-S group is pleased to announce that the complete specification document of Triple-S XML Version 2.0 is scheduled to be available at the beginning of July 2005.
Since its introduction in 1994, Triple-S has been adopted by well over 40 independent survey software companies and is the only successful open standard specifically intended for survey computing.
The new version includes improvements designed to broaden the scope and further extend the application of Triple-S to more problem areas whilst being compatible with the previous XML versions 1.1 and 1.2. In particular, version 2.0 adds:
- Support for hierarchical data structures
Representations for non-numeric code values
The option of CSV (comma-separated values) data files
Specification of Score values (e.g. for variables representing Likert scales)
Date and Time variables
In addition, various limits and restrictions have been rationalised to make the Triple-S specification more consistent, and make it easier for importers to cope with the potentially large variation in exports.
Two more companies join the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
May 2005
There are now 42 Triple-S implementations from software companies around the world.
April 2005
A new version of the Triple-S DSC’s for SPSS MR DataModel is now available direct from Cobalt Sky (formerly ATP).
Czech Republic Company Mediaresearch joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
February 2005
US company Microtab Inc. and UK company Centurion Marketing Systems Ltd. join the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
January 2005
German company jvp Datentechnik and US company Decipher join the growing list of Triple-S implementers this month.
December 2004
Oregon based company InsightsNow joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
November 2004
Triple-S XML 2.0 Request for Comment
The Triple-S Group has been working on defining extensions to the current Triple-S XML 1.2 standard to derive Triple-S XML 2.0. A PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) description of the proposals can be downloaded here and we would appreciate any comments you may have.
Oslo based company FIRM joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
October 2004
There are now 37 Triple-S implementations from software companies around the world.
June 2004
German company Globalpark , British company Nunwood and US company Language Logic join the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
May 2004
The recent Triple-S open meeting was held to discuss candidate features for inclusion in version 2. There were a total of 15 contributors representing survey software package developers, bespoke developers and users. Of the 15, 3 sent in written submissions and 12 attended the meeting in person. The key areas considered were:
- Code Value extensions for negative numbers and character values
Missing / Special Values
Hierarchical data structures
Delimited Data Files (e.g. CSV)
Score Values
Shared Code Lists
Date / Time Variable Type
Miscellaneous Notes
Rich and Specialised (modal) Texts
Limits and Restrictions
Dublin Core
As a result of the meeting the proposed changes are currently being written up by members of the Triple-S Group. Prior to publication of a final draft, a Triple-S RFC (“Request For Comment”) will be produced and posted on the website.
April 2004
The first Triple-S Open Meeting was held in London, UK on 31st March. Attendees discussed possible additions for version 2 of Triple-S XML based around contributions from the Triple-SGroup members together with submissions from other interested parties.
Netherlands based company Interview Technology joins the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
March 2004
Two more companies join the list of Triple-S implementers this month.
January 2004
The Triple-S group meets every month and is currently working towards a specification for Triple-S XML version 2.0.
A number of implementers have expressed a desire to have some input into this process and the group welcomes this participation. The March 2004 meeting will be held in central London at a time and venue to be agreed and we would like to invite up to six implementers and technically aware users to join us for a discussion centred on the functionality of version 2.0.
December 2003
Ohio based company Senecio Software Inc. is latest software supplier to support the Triple-Sstandard. A Triple-S option for both import and export has been added to the AskAnywhere software.
September 2003
The Triple-S Group look forward to meeting any interested parties at their special meeting at the forthcoming ASC Conference in Warwick UK. There will be presentations and an open discussion on the possible future of the Triple-S standard.
The meeting will take place on Thursday 18th September 5.15pm to 6.45 pm. Refreshments will be provided
This event is kindly sponsored by Cobalt Sky Ltd developers of the Quantum to Triple-Sconverter program.
Further information about the ASC Conference can be found at http://www.asc.org.uk
August 2003
The 4th ASC International Conference on Survey & Statistical Computing will be held from Wednesday 17th to Friday 19th September 2003, at Warwick University, UK.
A Triple-S meeting will take place at the conference on Thursday 18th September between 5.15.pm and 6.45 pm. A presentation will be given on the proposed future direction of theTriple-S standard, after which there will be an informal session for discussion and refreshments. All interested parties are welcome to attend.
NIPO has announced that it is the latest software supplier to support the Triple-S standard. A Triple-S export option has been added to the NIPO CATI, CAPI and Interview software.
July 2003
During the past 3 years there have been over 400 downloads of the Triple-S specification, and over 250 downloads of the conversion software that is available from this web site. The most requested module has been the Quantum to Triple-S converter developed by Cobalt Sky Ltd with over 100 downloads. Other popular modules are the Triple-S to Quantum converter from Mark-IT, and the SPSS to Triple-S converter developed by Merlinco Ltd.
To view the conversion software page click here.
June 2003
The list of software companies implementing Triple-S is still expanding. Two British companies, Data Liberation, based in London and OpenAir, based in Cheshire, join the list this month.
April 2003
A Triple-S group meeting will be held during this year’s Association of Survey Computing Conference. All users and implementers of the standard will be welcome.
The 3 day conference, titled ‘The Impact of Technology on The Survey Process’ , will be held at The University of Warwick, England, from Wednesday 17th to Friday 19th September 2003.
All the members of the Triple-S group will be attending the conference. A paper on Triple-S will be presented by Geoff Wright and papers on related subjects will be presented by Keith Hughes and Steve Jenkins.
The main conference web site can be viewed at http://www.asc.org.uk/Events/Sep03/index.htm and a pdf version of the conference brochure can be found at http://asc.org.uk/Events/Sep03/flyer2.pdf
March 2003
Norwegian company MI Pro has announced that it is the latest software supplier to support the Triple-S standard. A Triple-S option has been added to the MI Pro Research Studio software.
February 2003
The list of software implementing the Triple-S standard continues to expand.
January 2003
Triple-S DSC available for SPSSmr Data Model. This program was developed by Cobalt Sky Ltd. The Triple-S DSC comes in three parts. A read dsc for reading or importing Triple-S data, a metadata dsc for reading the metadata and a write dsc for writing or exporting data.
December 2002
We are asking for suggestions as to which way you want to see Triple-S develop and what new features you would like included.
You may want to suggest hierarchical or other data structures, or specification of derived variables, or provision of more free standard transfer utilities, or specification of a Triple-S API.
November 2002
Merlinco Ltd has developed a program which converts SPSS (windows) files into Triple-S XML format. This program is freely available to download here.
October 2002
The recent conference on Open Standards organised by the The Association of Survey Computing was a great success and included papers from organisations implementing Triple-Sand using Triple-S as part of an application solution. At the conference Geoff Wright of theTriple-S Group presented details of Triple-S 1.2. Read his paper here
At the September SPSS/MR User Group meeting in London, Mark Katz of Mark-It gave a paper on the Triple-S to Quantum converter. His paper is available here.
September 2002
The conference on Open Standards organised by The Association of Survey Computingtakes place on 19th September 2002 at Imperial College, London, U.K. The final program is now available for download here.
Quask AG becomes the 25th company to register a Triple-S implementation.
August 2002
An updated version of the Triple-S to Quantum converter from Mark-IT is available for download here.
Another new implementation of Triple-S by NEBU BV.
July 2002
A new version of Triple-S XML is now available from this site. Triple-S XML 1.2 is fully compatible with 1.1 and includes the following additional functionality:
- Routing and filtering
Survey name and version
Serial identification
Weight identification
Multi-language texts
Data file specification
The standard is freely available and the document type definition and implementation notes are now available for download here.
MRDC has announced that it is the latest MR software supplier to support the Triple-S standard. A Triple-S option has been added to the OnTraq software.
June 2002
The Triple-S Group has developed a program which converts Triple-S 1.1 and 1.0 files into Triple-S XML 1.1 format. This runs as a command-line executable program under Windows and is available for free download here
May 2002Open Standards: Breaking down the barriers Many different data formats, protocols and proprietary systems are used by the various software packages for survey research. The resulting barriers to the free movement of data and information have historically been difficult and expensive to overcome.
Call for Papers: Abstracts are invited from authors of standards, from users, and from those who have benefited from their application. Case studies in particular will be welcome. For more information click here.
The conference organised by The Association of Survey Computing takes place on 19th September 2002 at Imperial College, London, U.K.
New implementation of Triple-S by Danish company InterResearch. Their online survey system defgo.net is a pure ASP solution used by many larger Danish companies. For a link to their website and a full list of Triple-S implementations to date click here
April 2002
Nancy Tienhaara of DASHcati Software Ltd. Based in Victoria BC, Canada has written an article explaining the benefits of open standards in the survey software industry. In addition to Triple-S she cites AskML and TabsML from OpenSurvey. Read Nancy’s article here.
March 2002
CfMC has announced that it is the latest MR software supplier to support the Triple-S standard. A Triple-S option has been added to the Survent CAI system and Mentor analysis system.
September 2001
More free conversion utilities. The Quantum to Triple-S converter developed by Cobalt Sky Ltd has now been released and is available for free download on this site. Click here.
July 2001
Free conversion utilities. The Triple-S to Quantum converter from Mark-IT (see the news item for June 2001) has now been formally released and is available for free download on this site.
June 2001
Mark-IT has recently released a beta-test version of a Triple-S to Quantum
converter – SSSQT. This enables users wishing to transfer data from non-Quantum
environments to Quantum, for mainstream tabulations, or Quanvert. Read the full press release here.
March 2001
OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) promotes open XML standards for all types of software applications. The organization has recently recognized Triple-S XML as survey interchange standard. For a write up on Triple-S at the associated coverpages site see http://xml.coverpages.org/Triple-S.html
February 2001
Over 40 Triple-S implementations
The number of Triple-S implementations in survey software packages now exceeds 40 according to the recently compiled “Research Central” list of survey software athttp://www.macer.co.uk/rscentral/index.html. Just click on the ‘Triple-S compatibility’ checkbox and 43 different off the shelf packages will be listed proving that Triple-S is the standard to work to.
December 2000
New Triple-S Group Member
New to the Triple-S steering group is Laurance Gerrard, Director of IT at Maritz-TRBI. For many years he has seen at first hand the problems associated with moving data between analysis applications. Among his many tasks, Laurance is charged with raising awareness of Triple-S amongst the user community.
August 2000
New XML resources links
A new page listing useful XML and related on-line resources has been added to the Triple-S site. The resources include pointers to sites dealing with XML organisations and specifications as well as those listing end-user and developer XML software. The resources are available here
August 2000
Opinions and information sought
Following a rush of enquiries and visitors to the Triple-S web site a survey is being sent out enquiring as to past visitors thoughts and opinions on the Triple-S initiative and requesting ideas for future versions. The survey is also available on-line here
July 2000
Triple-S XML revised: DTD available on-line
The element and attribute names have been changed to be all lower-case to improve readability of a Triple-S XML definition file and the DTD may now be referenced directly on-line at http://triple-s.org/dtd/sss_v11.dtd. Documentation describing the standard is available for download from this site.
April 2000
New technical committee formed to develop Triple-S XML 2.0
Two new members have been co-opted onto the Triple-S technical committee planning the next version of Triple-S XML. Paul Peterson (SPSSmr) and Ed Ross (from OpenSurvey) join Keith Hughes (Merlinco), Steve Jenkins (Mercator) and Geoff Wright (Computable Functions) in forming the new technical committee.
December 1999
Triple-S XML released
Following its preview in September at the ASC International Conference, work has now been completed on the design and documentation of the latest version of the Triple-S survey interchange standard. Documentation describing the standard is available for download from this site. Click here.
September 1999
Triple-S XML previewed at ASC Conference
A preview of the up-coming new Triple-S XML standard was presented by Keith Hughes at the recent Association for Survey Computing Conference held in Edinburgh University, UK in September. Delegates from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand learned of the background of Triple-S and how Triple-S XML has been designed to simplify import and export by making use of industry standard XML off-the-shelf parsers and other software tools to interpret file contents.
March 1998
Triple-S version 1.1 announced
September 1994
Triple-S version 1.0 announced
March 1993
Triple-S Group formed to ‘Crack Problem’ of Survey Interchange
