Database Developing WorldData Infrastructure for Research and Policy Analysis |
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In the last decades, many large-scale representative household surveys have been conducted in developing countries. In these surveys, for millions of individuals, demographic, socio-economic, health and other information has been collected. At this moment, the data from these surveys cover over 100 countries in all regions of the developing world. In the Database Developing World (DDW) these datasets are brought together, made comparable, and enriched with contextual data at the subnational and national level. In this way, a unique window to the developing world is created that makes it possible to study important processes taking place there on a scale and with a degree of detail that has never been possible before. Analyzing and monitoring large-scale demographic, socio-economic, behavioral, political, cultural, health, institutional and environmental changes taking place throughout the developing world. Developing indicators at the level of regions/provinces within countries that make it possible to monitor changes at the sub-national level with great detail. These indicators can be used scientifically, but also for creating detailed overview scans of regions for political or humanitarian purposes. The DDW contains indicators for seven of the eight Millenium Development Goals. Connecting the household level information in the DDW with data from other sources (like satellite images) on the physical, geographical and biological environment in which the households are living. In this way, information from both kinds of sources can be related to each other and large-scale analyses can be performed of the interaction between man and environment. Expanding the power of the database continuously by including new datasets and variables and by developing new techniques to integrate, enrich and analyze the multiple-source multilevel data in it. The DDW is not a database in the classic sense. It is an open data infrastructure to which continuously new datasets and variables are added. The datasets are archived separately after standardization and construction of new variables. To run a specific analysis on the DDW, the variables needed for that analysis are extracted from the datasets and brought together in a working file. On that working file the analysis is run. More information on the way the DDW is structured can be found here. The datasets included in the DDW were provided by the owners/distributers of the data for specific research projects. The datasets themselves or parts of them cannot be made available to others. Researchers interested in the raw datasets can obtain them directly from the providers. Their websites are mentioned at the datasets page. However they will have to do the tedious work of harmonization of datasets and creation of new variables themselves. The DDW team is currently looking for ways to let others take advantage of their work. There are several possible alternatives. First, the team can do analyses on the data for others. This alternative is already possible for many countries. Second, we can provide indicators at the national and district level to others, directly or through our website. Third, we might make extracts of the data for others, so that they can run analyses themselves on them. However, because we are not allowed to distribute household-level data, the possibilities in this respect are restricted. What exactly will be possible depends also on the source of the data and the aims of the research. More information on the possibilities is available here. |
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