I thought it might be useful for us to post notes on Mary’s weekly gov pubs session for GAAs and those who couldn’t make the session, and also to serve as a rudimentary knowledge base of topics we’ve covered. We could add an entry post-session, and then anyone can edit or comment as necessary. (Thanks, Mary, for agreeing to this!)
In today’s session, we looked at the new interface for the World Bank’s World Development Indicators Online (WDI). WDI has statistical data for over 550 development indicators, and time series data from 1960- for over 200 countries and 18 country groups. Mary notes that we continue to carry the WDI print volumes as they have a substantial amount of extra material NOT found in the online source, such as large bibliographies and extra resources.
WHEN SHOULD I USE THIS RESOURCE?
This is the first place to look for stats on developing countries. Recently, they have started adding social statistics and statistics on social projects.
The new interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. Users are presented with a series of screens from which to make their selections on three variables: Country; series; and time. A search box is also available on each screen to search for variables.
We selected 4 countries:(Canada, Cuba, China, and the US); searched for “vehicles” to retrieve two series on “Vehicles per 1,000 people”and “Vehicles per km of road”; and selected a range of years (1986-2006).
The table that is generated is manipulable; you can view and resort the data in a number of different ways (all series for a single country; a single series for all countries, etc.) The data can be presented in table or chart format or even a lovely colour map! To display the map, you need to select all countries for the series and dates.
In the new WDI interface, notes on data sources can be found by clicking the link for that entry to display the notes (rather than going to a separate “notes” section to view all notes at once.
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PLEASE leave comments on anything I missed (or misinterpreted!). As we add more, you’ll be able to browse topics from earlier sessions by clicking the “Gov pubs sessions” category in the left hand menu.