Retrieving World Bank Data

World Band DataBank Overview

The World Bank's DataBank is a publicly accessible collection of socioeconomic time series data from countries around the world.

This tutorial describes and explains how to select and retrieve data from the collection.

Times series data for the many socioeconomic variables are found in two different ways:

• perform a keyword search using the Explore databases search box in the top middle of the page

• browsing time series that are organized into "databases".  A number of the different databases are listed below the search box.  You can sort or "View all databases" in the menu between the search box and the list of databases.

 For now, click on the third database in the list, Education Statistics - All Indicators

Using the Selection Interface - Database

Selecting data is done by selecting 4 variables in the menu system on the left side of the screen using the triangle menu indicator in front of each variable:

 Drop down the Database menu by clicking on the triangle to the left of "Database".

Note that one database, "Education Statistics" is already selected.

Using the Selection Interface - Country

Click on the triangle next to "Country" to open the Country variable menu.

For now, scroll, find, and check the box next to "Brazil". 

Using the Selection Interface - Series

Click on the triangle next to "Series" to open the Series variable menu.

Note that there are over 4000 series to choose from in this database.  To learn what information is contained in a series, click on the circle with an "i" in the middle to open a pop-up frame that contains metadata describing the information in the variable.

Note that at the top of the Series menu you can search for keywords in series names.

For now, scroll down and check the box next to:

"Adult illiterate population, 15+ years, both sexes (number)"

Using the Selection Interface - Time

Click on the triangle next to "Time" to open the Time variable menu.

Here is where you choose what years of data you want to retrieve.  Be aware that there is no guarantee that data will be available for the years selected.  Also, years not presented may indicate there is no data for those years.

For now, check the boxes for the years 2000 through 2018.

Finish Selecting Data

You have finished defining the data to retrieve.

In the top-center of the right-side panel of the web page there is a box with a blue button labled "Apply Changes"

Click on it.

Previewing Retrieved Data

The right-side Preview panel now contains the selected data.  Use the scroll bar to scroll the row of retrieved data to see it.

In the button menu bar above the Preview panel, click on the "Chart" button to see the data in a chart.

Download Data

Use the last button in the menu bar to download the selected data.

Click on the "Download options" button, and select "Excel".

You then can open the data in Excel or download it to the place your browser is set to download.

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