Data

The World Bank has announced that the contents of its subscription-only databases such as the World Development Indicators and Global Development Finance will now be available on-line for free. See http://go.worldbank.org/MZ29WQLWK0 for more information:

The library now has on-line subscriptions to the following IMF databases:

* Balance of Payments Statistics

* Direction of Trade Statistics

* Government Finance Statistics

These subscriptions are in addition to our International Financial Statistics on-line subscription. If you are familiar with the on-line interface to the IFS, the interfaces for these additional databases are very much the same in terms of layout and functionality.

Representatives from the ICPSR will be on-site at Emory University on Friday, March 19, to demonstrate the ICPSR's Resource Center for Minority Data (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/RCMD/).  The demonstration will last from 10:00AM - 12:00PM and will take place in Room 215 in the Woodruff Library and will focus on accessing the contents of this collection and on the various on-line learning tools that are part of it.  Refreshments will be provided.

The ICPSR has unveiled the NCAA Student-Athlete Experiences Data Archive at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NCAA/. This archive will be populated with data gathered by the NCAA for the purpose of evaluating the experiences and academic performance of NCAA athletes.

Professor Chris Blattman at Yale is a participant in a project titled the Survey of War Affected Youth.  The project, which focuses on northern Uganda, studies the impact of conflict on youth and the impact of programs intended to encourage post-conflict recovery. See http://chrisblattman.com/projects/sway/ for more information.

http://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Descriptions/ISLAMVAL.asp - "Comparative Values Survey of Islamic Countries," available at the Association of Religion Data Archives. The data are an extract from the World Values Survey, focusing on 15 countries with majority-Muslim populations. ARDA data are available as SPSS portable (.por) files.

The Association for Religion Data Archives at http://www.thearda.com/ recently added a collection of data consisting of responses from  a survey of individuals claiming to have been abducted by aliens.  To quote ARDA's description, "The survey contained a series of demographic questions, including gender, age, marital status and history, and occupation.

https://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/greg - Geo-referencing of Ethnic Groups, from the International Conflict Research section of ETH in Switzerland. Data are available in the form of a downloadable shapefile consisting of polygons for the locations of ethnic groups.

-freduse- is a Stata plug-in that allows users to access data directly from the Federal Research Economic Data portal at http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/.  Instead of having to download data files into text or Excel one at a time and clean them up and merge them all together, you can now download multiple series/variables from FRED and simultaneously import them into a properly-formatted Stata file.  For example, the syntax "freduse GASTHPI, clear" will read in FHFA housing price index data for Georgia. 

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research has just acquired the National Science Foundation Surveys of Public Understanding of Science and Technology, 1979-2006.  To quote Roper, "National Science Foundation's Surveys of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology have been used to monitor public attitudes toward a variety of science-related issues and topics since 1979.