This guide is intended to introduce you to the Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server interface by carrying out a simple and hopefully typical research task using the OECD Main Economic Indicators.

Visualise and download seasonally adjusted unemployment figures in the United Kingdom and Norway from January 1995 to March 2010.

It is divided into three stages:

1. Finding and selecting the data
2. Visualising the data
3. Downloading the data

Approx. time to complete: 20 minutes. Please use the 'Print friendly page' option at the top right of the screen to print out a copy of this guide and if you have any problems, please contact the ESDS International team.

Stage i) Finding and selecting the data

Choose OECD data from the 'Direct Links to macro data' drop down list on the ESDS International website, or via the following url - http://esds.mcc.ac.uk/wds_oecd to access the OECD Main Economic Indicators data.

Input your UK HE/FE institutional username and password in the login window. If you do not have this information, please visit the login help pages within the Access and Preservation section of ESDS.

If you have not yet registered with the ESDS you will be automatically redirected to complete an online registration after which you will need to agree to the OECD special conditions prior to being able to access the data using only your UK HE/FE institutional username and password.

On entering the Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server site for the OECD data you should see a list of OECD datasets.

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Expand the Main Economic Indicators folder to display three OECD MEI tables -Main Economic Indicators [Annual], [Quarterly] and [Monthly].

Click on Main Economic Indicators [Monthly] folder and you will be taken to the Country selection page.

Either select your countries by scrolling down and ticking the check boxes or use the search box to find and select Norway and the United Kingdom.

Then click on the Subject option on the left hand side of the screen. Type unemployment in the search input box and click Search.

Scroll down to select by ticking the check box next to Unemployment > Level > Registered > All persons [Level, rate or national currency, s.a.].

Then choose the Month option from the left hand side of the screen.

Use the Select range tick box to select dates Jan 1995 - Mar 2010.

Note: There is a new profile function in Beyond 20/20. Profiles enable you to save your selections from each dimension of the database (a dimension in the MEI is for example, Country, Subject or Month/Year/Quarter). When you return to the database you can re-activate your previously saved profiles. Selections in each dimension are saved individually so you can save selections in as many or few dimensions are you want.

For example, say you wish to select data for a number of countries. Once you have selected your countries you can then save this selection as a named profile by clicking on the profile icon then choosing Save current selections as a profile option. Beyond 20/20 will then remember the countries you have selected and store this selection as a named profile for you to use in future sessions. The procedure can be repeated for any other dimension of the database.

Each time you log on, Beyond 20/20 will recognize who you are and can retrieve your previously saved selections for that database. This means that the next time you wish to run the same query you can click on the profile icon then select Activate profile to reopen your saved selections. The profiles will be saved until you choose to delete them.

You have now completed the Finding and Selecting data stage and can move on to visualising your data.

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Stage ii) Visualising the data

There are two ways of visualising data in Beyond 20/20 WDS - in chart or table format.

View the report in table format by using the Show Table tool at the top of the screen.

In the default view of the table which appears, the dimensions Month and Subject are displayed with the Country dimension showing only Norway across the top of the screen.

You will need to rearrange the table format in order to show both Norway and UK data on the same screen. by dragging and dropping the dimension headings. To do this, hover your mouse over the Country dimension heading until your cursor changes into a four pointed arrow. Left click to drag and drop next to the Subject dimension heading.

This will result in a table which has the Month displayed across the top of the screen in columns and the Subject and Countries shown as rows beneath.

You can also change the dimension order by clicking the Set dimension order tool on the toolbar. Use the arrows to change the dimension order. To achieve the same result as above you will need Month to appear in the Columns field and Subject and Country to appear in the Rows field. Other should remain empty.

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View the report in chart format by clicking the Chart tab at the top of the screen.

In the example screen shot below, the chart shows the Norway and UK unemployment data in stacked column chart format.

Use the Chart Types icon to change chart type and the View printable version icon to print the chart.

To save the chart image, right click on the printable version of the image and use Save picture as option.

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Stage iii) Downloading the data

Return to the table view using the 'Table' tab to download the data to your computer. Manipulate the table into desired format using the dimension headers as the table layout and contents are downloaded exactly as they appear on screen.

Use the 'Download' icon and select your desired download format.

The rest of the process is the same as downloading any file from the web.

Once you have downloaded the data, you can see information on how to cite the data towards the top of the file.

Congratulations you have successfully completed the OECD Main Economic Indicators tutorial - now you are ready to do some serious work with your downloaded data!

Please see the OECD Main Economic Indicators dataset user guide for further information on the contents of the database.

If you would like to move to another database you can select the 'Quick Links to Macro Data' drop down box at the top of the page then select the database you require.

Note: All Beyond 20/20 images used on this page are Copyright © Beyond 20/20 Inc. All rights reserved.

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