This guide is intended to introduce you to Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server by carrying out a simple and hopefully typical research task using the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI).

	Visualise and download male and female Life expectancy figures in 5 year intervals from 1980 onwards for the following regions:
	East Asia & Pacific (all income levels) Europe & Central Asia (all income levels) Latin America & Caribbean (all income levels) Middle East & North Africa (all income levels) South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa (all income levels)

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.

Use the 'printer friendly page' option at the top right of this page if you wish to print out this task and if you require any help please contact the ESDS International team.

Stage i) Finding and selecting the data

Choose World Bank data from the 'Direct Links to data' drop down list on the ESDS International website, or via the following url - http://esds.mcc.ac.uk/wds_wb to access the World Bank data.

Access to the data is free and available to all - no need to register.

On entering the Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server site for the World Bank data you should see a folder labeled World Bank. It contains the three World Bank databases hosted by ESDS International: Global Development Finance, World Development Indicators and Africa Development Indicators.

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Select World Development Indicators and you will be taken to the Country/Group dimension view where you can select the geographical area of interest.

On the left hand side of the screen you will see the available dimensions under Columns, Rows and Other headings. The current dimension is highlighted in grey, for example in the screen shot above the Country/Group dimension is highlighted and a list of the countries and groups available for selection are shown on the right hand side of the page.

The dimensions in World Bank World Development Indicators table are as follows:

Columns: Year
Rows: Series
Others: Country/Group

A small blue 'i' icon indicates summary information about a table or dimension item is available.

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Scroll down and select the following Country/Groups by ticking checkboxes:

• East Asia & Pacific (all income levels)
• Europe & Central Asia (all income levels)
• Latin America & Caribbean (all income levels)
• Middle East & North Africa (all income levels)
• South Asia
• Sub-Saharan Africa (all income levels)

Move onto next dimension 'Series' by clicking its name under the heading 'Rows' or by using the 'Select Items to View' icon .

Type 'life expectancy' into the search input box and click 'Search'. Three series will appear - life expectancy figures at birth for female, male and a total. Select the first series 'Life expectancy at birth, female (years)'.

Select the dimension 'Year'. Scroll down the year items and tick 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005.

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, only the data from one 'Country/Group' is shown - you can use the arrows highlighted in the screen shot above to scroll through the selected regions.

Change the format of the table by dragging and dropping the 'Country/Group dimension' heading so that it is displayed next to the 'Series' heading. You can also use the 'Set Dimension Order' tool (which has an icon below the Table tab at the top of the screen) to re-organise the dimensions.

The resulting table will appear as shown in the screen shot below:

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

To now view the report as a chart, simply click on the  tab at the top of the screen. The default chart type is a bar chart.
Use the drop down menu from the chart types icon from the toolbar at the top to change aspects such as chart type and to view a printable version of the chart.
Click on a chart image to enlarge it. In the example below the ‘Female Life Expectancy at birth’ chart has been enlarged. The chart type has also been altered to display the data in a Line chart using the chart types drop down menu.

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

To save the chart image, use Alt + Print Screen and paste into a paint program as right clicking to 'Save picture as' only saves the chart itself and not the chart key or heading.

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Stage iii) Downloading the data

Return to the Table view to download the data to your pc. 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 World Bank WDI tutorial - now you are ready to do some serious work with your downloaded data!

Please see the World Bank World Development 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.

Tested on Netscape 7 and Internet Explorer 7.

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

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