Obtaining information about databanks and standards is often important in making cross national comparisons.Such information is obtainable at several levels through ESDS International macro data-banks.
Data series obtained from ESDS International contain some metadata with tables and reports that often give an immediate check on comparability.
In this activity you will use Beyond 20/20 to obtain information about metadata and information about data standards from ESDS International resources.
More metadata can be obtained from the ESDS user guides. These in turn make reference to basic documentation obtainable online from the IGOs' own web-sites.
This activity will show you how to obtain detailed data set descriptions and user guides from ESDS International site. You will use the UN Common Data-base as your example.
In this activity you will locate detailed documentation about the United Nations Common Database
The IMF run a program to make direct cross national comparisons of metadata - see next section.
