In this task, you are going to search for data on poverty in Zambia. ESDS International has a search catalogue page at http://www.esds.ac.uk/international/access/datasearch.asp You can also reach this page by going to the Data tab then Search International Datasets link.
A search for 'Zambia' brings up all the databases that include Zambia as a country covered or in the description of the database. The default search will search both the macro (aggregate) and micro (survey) databases.
Searching tips:
- use double quotes for an exact phrase search, e.g. "direction of trade"
- use an asterisk, e.g. research* to find researcher, researching, researches, or researched
- '?' wildcards are supported, e.g. teach??? to find teaching or teachers
- searches are case insensitive
A search for Zambia and poverty narrows the search to databases containing both those terms. The subject terms included in the catalogue are at a very broad level. For example, a search on 'aids' returns only survey datasets. It does not return the World Bank, United Nations Common Database, Eurostat or any of the international databanks that in fact contain very detailed time series data on HIV/Aids. This is because there is no common system of metadata creation for the international databanks and because of the size and range of the databanks, metadata can only be produced at a very broad level, e.g. 'health' rather than 'HIV/AIDS'. Most of the data providers produce a country list in an attached file for each databank but there is very little searchable data on the subject covered and virtually none in any standard form. This is why to find the data you want we recommend that after locating the databases that include data on the country you are interested in, use the dataset userguides rather than the catalogue for locating the data you need.
Once you are inside a database, you can use the Search functionality of Beyond 20/20 to locate the data you need at item level.